Healthcare

Each January, the IRS updates several revenue procedures that prescribe the process for requesting determination letters for qualified retirement plans. For the most part, these have changed very little from one year to the next, except for increases in user fees charged. This year, the IRS made significant changes, which purportedly are intended to improve its efficiency. To understand why the new guidance involves both good news and bad news for plan sponsors necessitates a…

Health-related applications are among the top three apps employees are most interested in using on their smartphones or tablets. Weather-related apps came in at No. 1, cited by 53.6% of respondents, followed by music (52.9%) and health-related (51.2%).

Although the rate of health care cost increases is expected to remain stable in 2012, employers are taking more aggressive steps to manage their rising costs and improve employee health, according to findings from the 2012 Towers Watson/National Business Group on Health Employer Survey on Purchasing Value in Health Care. The survey was completed by 512 employers who work at companies with at least 1,000 employees and collectively employ 9.1 million full-time employees, and represent more than $87 billion in annual health care spending.

Fortune Magazine’s list of the 50 Most Admired Companies only includes one insurer, Berkshire Hathaway, at No. 7. However, the news outlet ranked insurers separately in their own categories: “Property and Casualty,” “Life and Health” and “Health Care: Insurance and Managed Care.”

Much has been left up in the air around the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, with several mandates not yet fully realized because of delays in rules and the possibility of the Supreme Court ruling parts of the law as unconstitutional.

The odds of being single at some point during retirement are high and present unique challenges for both “ever single” retirees who never married and for those who become “suddenly single” in retirement due to divorce or death of a spouse. In fact, 43% of Americans age 65 and older are single due to divorce, having never married, or the death of a partner.

Many small business owners are unprepared for retirement, with a third of the women and a quarter of the men in a new survey having no estimate of how much they will need when they retire.

Almost half of men and 46% of women who purchased individual critical illness insurance policies in 2011 were younger than age 45, according to a recent survey.

Every election year brings a certain degree of uncertainty to the financial markets, making life a bit more complicated for financial advisers and clients trying to anticipate how whatever happens in November will impact publicly traded companies, the tax code, Social Security and the full gamut of investment products going forward.

Workplace retirement plan investors who use target-date funds feel more secure about reaching their goals and managing their portfolios than those who did not, a recent study from ING finds.