Employer Strategies

The Affordable Care Act’s inclusion of pediatric dental coverage as an essential health benefit has small employers facing a dilemma: Whether to embed dental coverage within a medical plan or offer dental benefits as a stand-alone plan. Market confusion about what these plan options include and exactly what the health reform law requires highlights the need for expert benefit adviser help.

As an effort to comply with the ACA, some employers have been considering offering employees a lump sum of cash to purchase health care coverage on the exchanges, but the DOL now says such an arrangement isn't going to cut it.

Preparing Americans for retirement is at the forefront of priorities for lawmakers and industry, as putting off saving for retirement for even a few years will woefully shortchange employees in their golden years.

Commentary: Individuals and small businesses in NY can't get quality health coverage, and New Yorkers should exercise caution when considering moving to a single-payer system.

Delays, limited awareness, competition and insufficient subsidies among problems outlined in a Government Accountability Office report on state and federal small group exchanges. CMS says brokers will play a key role in any future growth.

The pro-Affordable Care Act national non-profit group Enroll America is expanding its outreach staff and launching new technology-driven tools in order to reach the still uninsured and enroll them in health insurance during open enrollment, which starts Saturday.

As retirement confidence among employees remains low, small business owners and their workforces may even be less prepared due to the scarcity of formal retirement education and established retirement savings plans to help this demographic.

Employee Benefit Adviser, in partnership with business intelligence data analytics firm miEdge, introduces the first listing of top employee benefit firms in the country to be ranked exclusively on health and welfare revenue. Revealed in descending order, the listing is based on Form 5500 reporting data as of Nov. 7, 2014.

The Supreme Court did not appear overly supportive of the so-called Yard-Man presumption during arguments this week in M&G Polymers USA, LLC v. Tackett.

The funded status of some multiemployer pension plans has not seen any drastic improvements since the great recession. But now, as proposals lurk in Congress to eliminate pension liabilities and improve the overall insolvency of these plans, there may be changes on the horizon.