Healthcare plans

Part of President Barack Obama’s health-care law is on hold in a Colorado case until at least tomorrow, as the U.S. Supreme Court considers contentions from religious groups that say they don’t want to facilitate coverage for contraception.

From emergency rooms to pharmacies to company human-resources departments, changes will unfold within the U.S. health-care system on Jan. 1 as the nation guarantees insurance coverage to all Americans for the first time, a goal that has eluded presidents and lawmakers since the end of World War Two.

The deadline to enroll in health plans that begin Jan. 1 was extended to midnight today from yesterday for most of the U.S., the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said. The extension was announced as healthcare.gov yesterday experienced a single-day record number of visits and consumers were moved into a queuing system deployed when the website approaches 50,000 simultaneous users.

As 2013 comes to a close, we’re taking a look at some of the most popular stories on our website this year. Here are the top five blog items of 2013.

2013 is not over yet. Employers and HR and benefits professionals must address these 14 compliance issues before the New Year begins. Timothy F. Kennedy is a partner in Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads’s Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation Practice, concisely outlines retirement and health care issues that plan sponsors must consider in the following days.

The success of the health care overhaul relies on a diverse pool of customers where younger, healthier participants balance the costs of covering older, sicker people. Insurers say they can’t make more concessions without putting themselves at risk that patients will wait and sign up only when they need care.

While employers expect to continue implementing cost-sharing measures in their health care plans in 2014, most plan on keeping group coverage for the next year. And just 5% of employers anticipate moving employees to a private exchange, according to the 2013/2014 Verisight and McGladrey Compensation, Retirement and Benefits Trends Survey.

The most recent LIMRA survey reveals that approximately 60% of Americans who have used health exchanges so far to try to shop for health coverage say they sought out assistance when actually buying their health insurance plan.

Why small employers haven’t bought into private exchanges — yet

The Internal Revenue Service has issued guidance on the application of rules in the Tax Code relating to health savings accounts and flexible spending accounts to same-sex couples in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision earlier this year striking down the Defense of Marriage Act.

In what can be viewed as a victory for plan sponsors, the Supreme Court ruled that statute of limitation periods written into plan documents are valid, as long as those periods are “reasonable.”

A group of Catholic health and educational organizations don’t have to comply with a federal Affordable Care Act requirement to provide their employees with contraception coverage, a federal judge in New York ruled.

The government failed to send data to health insurers for about 15,000 people who enrolled in Obamacare through early December, an error corrected last week before it could jeopardize their coverage, the U.S. said.

There’s some good news for those who fear that putting health care financial decisions in the hands of employees might produce nothing but confusion. Instead, a new survey indicates that employees who actively contribute to their HSAs do indeed become more engaged and involved in managing their health.

As the year winds down, Contributing Editor Ed Bray outlines what's in store for benefits professionals in 2014. Benefit trends included in Part 2 range from Health Savings Accounts to same-sex marriage compliance.

After speaking with the leader of Towers Watson's Exchange Solutions segment and Liazon’s CEO to understand how small and larger employers should strategically approach the private exchanges, here are the key thoughts employers of any size should consider when deciding whether to shift to a defined contribution approach to health care benefits.

Employers continue to see a rise in health insurance costs. Annual premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage reached $16,351 in 2013, up 4% from last year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET) 2013 Employer Health Benefits Survey. So how can employers work to control these costs? A key success factor in reducing health insurance costs is the leadership’s commitment to this strategy. Can you find top-down leadership commitment to a long-term program…

Time may not be on the side of carriers in their quest to set appropriate rates for 2015 if the 2014 enrollments take longer than expected because of further online technical delays, public apathy or both.

In the latest ACA delay announced Wednesday, HHS touts brokers as an alternative for small businesses to enroll

Sebelius cautioned that the “on” switch has not magically been flipped on, though “…the experience is vastly improved each and every day.”