Employer Strategies

A benefits manager may assume that health care coverage and insurance needs are easily covered as employees head off to international worksites, but preparing for accidents - or the complexity of global insurance rules - requires some extra forethought.

Given the past high-profile data security breaches at large retailers Target and Home Depot, legal officials maintain there may be more at stake for employers and benefit managers when lapses occur in health care provider systems.

A couple weeks into the post-Bill Gross PIMCO era, plan sponsors may be interested in learning what other plan sponsors are doing with their PIMCO funds in their retirement plans.

The quality of Form 5500 reporting depends entirely on whether benefit managers and plan fiduciaries select qualified auditors and service providers, says Ian Dingwall, chief accountant for the DOL's Employee Benefits Security Administration, speaking this week during the International Foundation for Employee Benefit Plans' annual conference in Boston.

A new broker-friendly private exchange is launching that will allow employees at companies with less than 50 lives to buy health insurance using pre-tax dollars.

Earlier this week, Walmart announced it was dropping health care coverage for employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week, a move the company estimates will affect about 2% of its workforce. Here’s a wrap-up of our analysis, plus a look at the ways other large companies are handling rising health care costs.

The number of employees with long-term disability plans has dropped and employees paying more for coverage, despite the fact that that 1 in 8 will need it during their career.

At Alliance Resource Partners, 4% of the workforce is responsible for roughly 45% of the company's annual health care spend. The coal mining company is implementing new initiatives to better reach workers at remote mine sites.

Commentary: Have you heard of Medicare observation status? Columnist Craig J. Davidson says it is creating a payment nightmare for older plan participants with Medicare Part A as the primary payer. Educate your groups with Medicare beneficiaries, Davidson says, because the rule has real consequences.

Wearable wellness is here to stay, yet precisely how the devices will affect employer programs remains to be seen.