Employee benefits

Employee Benefit News is soliciting short articles from benefits professionals on best practices related to open enrollment and voluntary benefits. Articles selected by the editors will appear in EBN’s June 1 issue or on the Web site.

Aflac Dental policyholders have a reason to smile. The carrier’s new voluntary dental insurance plan now offers multiple levels of coverage and more generous benefits that include higher annual maximums and better orthodontic coverage.

Younger generations aren’t very familiar with critical illness insurance, but challenging times appear to be spiking their interest in other workplace benefits, according to two sets of jointly conducted surveys.

After seeing enrollment in its medical plans gradually dwindle to less than 2% of total group membership, the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America will shutter this product line and instead focus on dental, disability, life, critical illness and disability offerings.

Critics of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) once warned that the law would decimate mini-med plans – that is, until the U.S. Health and Human Services Department (HHS) issued regulatory guidance.

The National Committee for Quality Assurance recently issued new standards for its Patient-Centered Medical Home program. More than 7,700 clinicians at 1,500 sites use existing standards from Washington-based NCQA in their medical home initiatives.

Employers are expected to invest more money to protect personal information in response to increased government regulation and enforcement and to stem the rising tide of risk, according to a new report released by Ernst & Young.

The Great Place to Work Institute and Fortune magazine recently released the 100 best companies to work for list, which also lauds employers that went the extra mile to deliver unusual perks within their benefits programs.

The latest news on industry movers and shakers concerns one seasoned executive’s career move and a veteran disability insurance agent earning kudos for his staff from a leading carrier for a thirteenth consecutive year.

The voluntary benefits bandwidth for independent insurance agents and brokers is growing, thanks to a recent industry partnership.

Be sure to mark your calendar for a series of online educational forums in 2011 on disability and absence management co-presented by two industry leaders.

Nothing in life is guaranteed, but working Americans increasingly are in search of flexible income-protection products that will offset market volatility.

Small and large employers say they have no plans to reduce spending on non-medical benefits in light of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, according to a MetLife poll.

The Society of Human Resource Management and the Families and Work Institute launched a new partnership called "Moving Work Forward," which hopes to increase the number of employers implementing flexible-workplace arrangements.

The National Business Group on Health reports a growing number of workers seek health and medical information from their employers.

New data by Aon Hewitt show 57 % of 401(k) plan sponsors offered automatic enrollment in 2010, compared to 24% in 2006. Thirty-six percent of plan sponsors who don’t offer the feature said they are likely to add it in 2011.

The National Business Group on Health has launched an ambitious, three-year initiative aimed at helping employers design benefit plans that reflect the latest information and expert recommendations on cancer treatment and prevention.

Worksite voluntary benefits as we know them are dead. Driven largely by the spiraling cost increases in group health insurance, over the past decade or so employers have been shifting benefit costs to employees.

To say that the industry's segmentation and understanding of defined contribution plan advisers is crude would be quite an understatement. At the grossest level, the industry looks at whether advisers are commissioned or fee-based and whether they serve the small-plan market or the large-plan market.

Every year brings something new in this business, but the changes you'll see this year - and the ones you'll be anticipating - could be dramatic. That's thanks to a bevy of new regulations, some final and some still in the proposal stage, from the Department of Labor.