For 2019, the annual fee to fund the federal Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), paid by employers that sponsor self-insured health plans and by commercial group health insurance providers, will go up by about .06 cents per employee or dependent enrolled in the health plan. The fees are due by July 31. The chart below [...]
The article below was published on October 10, 2017 by MyHealthGuide, written by Matthew Albright. A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill the first week in October that will significantly ease the Affordable Care Act reporting mandates for employer-sponsored health plans. The bill, called the Commonsense Reporting Act of 2017, in effect rolls back [...]
The article below was published on September 5, 2017 by Employee Benefit News, written by Arthur Jonokuchi. When it comes to healthcare plan administration, ASOs (administrative services only) say they offer a big discount to self-funded plans. If you look closer, however, you’ll see that they actually do come with a cost, both monetarily and [...]
It used to be that self-funding was limited to only the largest companies that could afford the manpower to administer their own plans. Not anymore.
The article below is from International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, written by Teri Dougherty Governor Scott Walker recently proposed self-funding Wisconsin’s $1.5 billion health insurance program for 250,000 state and local government workers and their dependents. For now, it is a proposal that is being heavily debated in the Wisconsin State Legislatures Joint Finance [...]
Healthcare costs continue to rise at an alarming rate and we all need to be Defining our Health Strategy. We thought it would be helpful to share what we do here at Diversified in regard to our strategy as an employer that has a self- funded medical plan. We like to say at Diversified that [...]
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 [...]
In a 6-2 decision on a case involving Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, the Supreme Court, in early March, held that ERISA pre-emption blocks the state of Vermont from requiring self-funded health plans to put claims data into a statewide health claims database. This decision appeared to be consistent with the original intention of Congress to [...]
Article written by Michael W. Ferguson, as seen in the New York Post New York’s state legislators are thinking small — literally. The state’s definition of “small business” expanded Jan. 1, thanks to legislation passed in 2013. Many firms that thought of themselves as medium-size are now legally considered “small.” One consequence: They’re barred from [...]
You’ve adopted an increasingly popular new health plan strategy to save money on costs – why would you want to give up half of your plan savings to the company managing your plan? That’s what’s happening to some employers who may be unaware that their plan administration firm has incorporated this 50/50 savings split into [...]
