Healthcare reform

With mental health and substance abuse disorder services deemed an essential health benefit under the Affordable Care Act, employee assistance program providers are taking on a new role – helping employers and health plans sniff out fraudulent health care activity among substance abuse and mental health treatment facilities.

Although the ACA’s excise tax doesn’t go into effect until 2018, employers are already fearful — benefit advisers should be offering ideas and solutions to calm their fears.

For employers fighting to maintain grandfathered status, consultants and benefit managers predict the Affordable Care Act’s ongoing implementation will mean the end of these health plan structures in the near future.

Several tech companies this week announced they would be adding egg freezing benefits to their health plan. While that may sound like a nice perk to some, making this and other benefit plan changes comes with risks that your employer clients, with your help, should consider.

The Internal Revenue Service said that the sequestration process could have an impact on the amount that certain small tax-exempt employers receive on the refundable portion of the Small Business Health Care Tax Credit.

The new CEO of the federal health insurance marketplace, Kevin Counihan, knows there is room for improvement, but says new processes have Healthcare.gov ready for 2015 open enrollment.

A fix is in the works to ensure agents and brokers can identify themselves and therefore receive commissions for their work on the federally-facilitated marketplace, an agency official at The Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight said Tuesday.

Walmart’s announcement this week that it will drop health care coverage for its part-time employees reiterates that employer-sponsored health care coverage is changing, and those benefit advisers who plan to remain relevant to clients must change, too.

EBA’s annual Workplace Benefits Summit, held last week in Boca Raton, Fla., included a celebration of our Advisers of the Year, strategy and marketing tips from benefit professionals, and the presentation of our inaugural Most Influential Women in Benefit Advising awards.

The more things appear to change, the more they appear to stay the same. That’s what a consumer health advocacy group in Florida is saying about double-digit health insurance premium increases that it says have been predating, and now post-dating, the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Walmart Stores Inc. the world’s biggest retail chain, plans to stop offering health benefits to employees who work less than 30 hours a week, a move that will affect about 2% of its U.S. staff.

Health care reform has changed the role of the adviser from insurance broker to that of a trusted adviser, counselor and compliance guru. Advisers hoping to thrive in this new environment will embrace the change less as a burden and more as an opportunity.

Can a cafeteria plan prevent an employee from heading to the exchange? New IRS direction clarifies mid-year changes for your client’s cafeteria plan participants.

Complicated and tedious ACA reporting requirements are forcing benefit advisers who want to stay relevant to adapt to a more automated way of doing business.

With the ACA’s employer mandate on the horizon, many employers with part-time and variable hour employees are also re-evaluating their benefit offerings for part-time employees.

Health care reform has presented employers plenty of new challenges to grapple with when it comes to offering health care coverage, and, many say, has expanded the critical role of benefit advisers who heed the call.

With the Affordable Care Act’s employer shared responsibility reporting requirements for 2015 quickly approaching, benefit advisers should already be working with employer clients to implement benefit administration systems to ensure compliance with the law, industry experts say.

As more and more companies are flooded with administrative duties due to the Affordable Care Act, cloud-based HR and benefits systems such as Zenefits are starting to gain a substantial hold in the employer market.

Those who purchase health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s state and federal exchanges will have more choices for coverage beginning in 2015, according to a Department of Health and Human Services report released Tuesday.

Health insurance premium rates are on the rise, a trend that could alter brokers’ selling strategies.