Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

An anthropology professor breastfed her sick baby in front of her undergraduate class recently, causing a minor stir on campus. The assistant professor at American University, Adrienne Pine, made the difficult decision during the first week of classes to bring her infant daughter to work after child care plans fell through. As an HR manager and peer, how would you respond if a similar situation occurred in your workplace?

Yes, you read that correctly. Friendly. And even helpful, says guest blogger Karrie Andes, who shares how the DOL and Employee Benefits Security Administration have helped her through everything from a health plan audit to appeals to disease management.

Guest blogger Karrie Andes shares her personal journey of becoming an adoptive parent and how it's helped her promote her company's adoption assistance benefits.

Over the course of his career, guest blogger Ed Bray has noted three important legal areas where employers sometimes struggle with compliance. With the help of attorney Marilyn Monahan, he outlines these requirements and what needs to happen for employers to stay compliant.

The Summary of Benefits and Coverage (required to be distributed to employees under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) is supposed to be an easy-to-understand summary about a health plan's benefits and coverage. But guest blogger Ed Bray maintains the SBC has the potential to confuse employees.

As self-insured employers start reviewing their annual agreements for 2013 benefits, guest blogger Karrie Andes shares her checklist of items to watch out for.

With the cost of specialty drugs going up, guest blogger Karrie Andes suggests plan sponsors need to be more proactive about asking their health plans and pharmacy benefit managers about cost containment strategies.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act imposes a new tax on health insurance providers in 2014. While insurers are responsible for paying it, plan sponsors should care about it because it could be passed down to fully insured group plans in the form of higher premiums.

Defined benefit plan sponsors may believe that outsourcing their plan administration must be much more expensive or that it won’t allow them to maintain their current actuary or investment manager. Other times, they think that the DB systems won’t match up to their defined contribution counterparts. Neither are necessarily true.

What do you say to employees when they start asking you whether they should participate in your company's health insurance plan or enroll in the state exchange? Guest blogger Ed Bray shares his thoughts.