Regulation

You are busy preparing your company's benefits open enrollment memo when the phone rings. It's Elizabeth from Operations, thanking you profusely because she just read in the newspaper that she can cover her 25-year-old son on the company's medical insurance plan.

On Capitol Hill the rubber has met the road on health reform. Last month saw three noteworthy attacks on PPACA. First the House passed the PPACA repeal bill that House Speaker John Boehner had promised. Then came the ruling by a federal district court judge in Florida that the entire law is unconstitutional. This was followed by passage in the Senate of a bill to repeal PPACA's widely disliked 1099 tax reporting burden.

As President Barack Obama's health care reform package worked its way through Congress in 2009 and early 2010, Randy Flem kept a close eye on the proceedings. When Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law on March 23, 2010, Flem knew it was time to dive in. A veteran of the political process, "I had this belief that I could make a difference," says Flem. "So I just moved forward."

It was just last March when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law. Now, one year later, the one thing that seems to be most certain ... is that nothing is certain at all.

Senators Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., have introduced a bill that would require the Internal Revenue Service to collect unpaid federal income taxes from civilian federal employees.

Most Americans oppose laws that would take away the collective bargaining power of public employee unions, as has been proposed in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states, according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll released on Wednesday.

The Wisconsin state Assembly late on Tuesday rejected an attempt to send back to the drawing board a Republican proposal to curb public sector union rights that has sparked large protests and a tense stand-off with Democrats.

Many of the millions of people with disabilities may be paying more in taxes than necessary, according to a disability insurance service provider.

The U.S. Department of Labor recently issued three advisory opinions considering fiduciary or prohibited transaction issues arising in the management of ERISA plans.

A new study in Health Affairs examines insurance coverage disruptions that could occur under the health law as individuals or families move between Medicaid coverage and subsidized coverage from private insurers that’s purchased through online state insurance exchanges.