Congress passes the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) and President Trump signed it into law on July 4th 2025. The final bill includes several provisions aimed at expanding access to Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and increasing the annual contribution limit for Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs). HSA Provisions HSA Funds for Direct Primary Care [...]
This article was published on September 27, 2018 on Employee Benefit News, written by Nelson Griswold. More than six years ago, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini proclaimed that “the end of insurance companies, the way we’ve run the business in the past, is here.” At the very least, it’s the beginning of the end for these [...]
This article was published on February 05, 2018 on Employee Benefit News, written by Liisa Granfors-Hunt. If your medical plan is fully insured, switching to self-funding (and covering catastrophic claims) can be downright intimidating, even with stop-loss insurance. That’s why many employers are sticking a toe in the financial risk pool by self-funding one or [...]
This article appeared on HartfordBusiness.com on December 18, 2017 from Brooks Goodison, President of Diversified Group. Connecticut health insurers recently announced their 2018 premiums. Employers won’t like them. Rates for some small business plans will rise more than 25 percent. That follows an average increase of 5 percent last year. Many Connecticut firms are understandably [...]
The 2018 Forecast for TPAs & Self-Funding, recently released by the Society of Professional Benefit Administrators (SPBA), expects factors to fuel continued growth and expansion by TPAs and self-funded health benefit plans in the coming year. The most significant of these factors is a growing demand by today's workforce for more personalized benefit offerings that [...]
The Altarum Center for Sustainable Health Spending reports a significant drop in health hiring, pricing and spending during the first five months of this year. On average, 22,000 jobs per month were added by hospitals and ambulatory care facilities, compared to 32,000 per month during the same period in 2016. While the healthcare sector continues [...]
The biggest gamble in the House health-care bill is whether it includes enough reform to arrest the current death spiral in the individual insurance market.
A recent Notes article from Employee Benefit Research Institute (ebri.org) examines 1996-2015 trends in self-insured health plans among private-sector establishments offering health plans and among their covered workers, with a particular focus on 2013 to 2015, so as to assess whether the Affordable Care Act (ACA) might have affected these trends. The data comes from [...]
It's amazing how states spend millions of dollars to try and attract new businesses. They run impressive TV commercials offering 10 year state tax exemptions to "start-ups" that accept their invitation to launch their business in their state. Only problem is when the start-up locates there, they discover that the same governing body that is [...]
The May, 2016 issue of The Self-Insurer magazine, Outside the Beltway article discusses how various states - and agencies within states - are challenging self-insured plans through claims tax schemes, limits on stop-loss insurance, demands for propriety data and other burdens. Brooks Goodison, President of Diversified Group, contributed insight, citing specific examples of state burdens [...]
