News

The Department of Labor (DOL) requires that participant notices and other plan information ("disclosures") be provided in a way that is reasonably calculated to ensure delivery to all plan participants. The Department of Health and Human Serv…

With all of the recent changes flowing from PPACA, it is important not to forget some very basic and long-standing aspects of plan compliance, design, drafting and administration, particularly those rooted in significant part in a law enacted 40 years …

The Department of Labor has published a new model COBRA general notice and a new model COBRA election notice. The new model notices reflect that coverage is available in the public health insurance exchanges, i.e., the “Marketplace,” and include inform…

The IRS has released the 2015 minimums and maximums that apply to health savings accounts (HSAs) and related high-deductible health plans (HDHPs). These increases occur annually based on a cost-of-living formula. Because the inflation rate is fairly lo…

The regulatory agencies issued a number of documents during the month of March, as they have tried to provide needed information with respect to 2014 and 2015 obligations under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Many employers will…

February brought two significant final regulations that affect an employer’s compliance obligations under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The first, on the employer-shared responsibility ("play or pay") requirements, d…

The U.S. Treasury Department released the final regulations implementing the employer shared responsibility penalty provisions of the 2010 health care reform law on February 10, 2014. In many ways, the final regulations resemble the proposed regulation…

Coverage first became available through the health marketplaces/exchanges on January 1, 2014, with a number of temporary provisions in effect to address some of the technical problems experienced in many of the marketplaces. Perhaps as a result of the …

December usually brings a number of releases from the regulatory agencies and 2013 has carried on that tradition.

November brought several developments of interest to group health plans.