Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation: Getting Ready for 2024 - Health and Welfare Plan Developments — Special Edition Podcast
The Form 5500: What All Employers and Plan Administrators Need to Know and How to Avoid Costly Fines
Compliance and Your Business: Managing SCA Costs and Liability
Nuts and Bolts of SCA
Cutting Costs With Employee Benefit Plans (Part 4 of 5) – Retirement Plan Costs
Cutting Costs With Employee Benefit Plans (Part 3 of 5) – Medical Benefit Costs
Cutting Costs With Employee Benefit Plans (Part 2 of 5) – Identifying Potential Targets
COVID-19 Impact for Health & Welfare Plans (Troutman Sanders and Pepper Hamilton COVID-19 Issues for Employers Podcast Series)
The US Departments of the Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services (the Departments) recently issued much-anticipated final regulations under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA). The newly issued...more
On September 9, 2024, the US Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor, and the Treasury (collectively, the Departments) finalized a rule titled Requirements Related to the Mental Health Parity and Addiction...more
In 2021, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued 3 documents outlining guidance on cybersecurity practices for benefits plans, which we discussed in a blog post at the time. The DOL recently issued revised versions of the...more
On Friday, September 6, 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor confirmed that its cybersecurity guidance applies to all employee benefit plans, including health and welfare plans. In 2021, the DOL issued guidance providing best...more
Summer is ending and fall is rapidly approaching. For employee benefit professionals with calendar-year health and welfare benefit plans that means preparing for annual enrollment and year-end compliance requirements. This...more
There are new regulations requiring employers who offer hospital indemnity or other fixed indemnity insurance benefits for plan years starting on or after January 1, 2025, to provide specific notice of the benefit to all...more
Recent lawsuits filed against the group health plans of two large US employers underscore the importance of implementing formal welfare benefit plan governance structures that include fiduciary committees comparable to the...more
If our trade and industry sources have it right, we could see final regulations implementing the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA), as most recently amended by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021...more
The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division (WHD) has again issued new Service Contract Act (SCA) health and welfare (H&W) rates. In July 2024, WHD increased the prevailing H&W fringe benefits from a rate of $4.98...more
On the latest episode of Just Compensation, Lowenstein’s Darren Goodman, Megan Monson, and Jessica Kriegsfeld of the Executive Compensation, Employment and Benefits practice discuss how the structure of an M&A transaction...more
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) regulates most private employee benefit retirement and welfare plans. This statute’s purview is vast; it governs employer-sponsored defined benefit and defined...more
Employers that sponsor a self-insured health plans must submit their Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) fees to the Internal Revenue Service by July 31, 2024. Plan sponsors need to calculate their PCORI fee...more
Maine’s comprehensive paid family and medical leave (PFML) law, enacted in October 2023, establishes a state benefits program funded by employer and employee contributions (the “Program”). The PFML law provides for...more
A question in response to last week’s post on self-funding of employer group health plans assumed that stop-loss coverage under a level-funded plan could be provided under a group captive medical captive. However, it cannot...more
In a recent article in Managed Healthcare Executive, Peter Wehrwein examines the trend of self-funding of group health benefits by smaller employers who used to depend mainly or entirely on fully insured programs....more
Seyfarth Synopsis: The IRS has announced increases to key limits for certain health and welfare benefit programs, including HSA contributions for 2025. The IRS recently released 2025 cost-of-living adjustments applicable to...more
In a recent On the Subject (available here), we reported on the impact of the final rule (final rule) interpreting Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on self-funded group health plans that contract with licensed...more
During this election year, McDermottPlus is actively monitoring annual regulations that federal agencies are expected to release, as well as “ad hoc” regulations that will be released at the discretion of federal agencies. ...more
The agencies have finalized a portion of their proposed rules impacting so-called “junk insurance” regarding short-term limited-duration insurance, but deferred finalizing the more significant changes that would have impacted...more
For the past few years, we have encouraged plan sponsors to focus on matters of fiduciary governance for their health and welfare benefit plans (see our 2021 blog post). Yet many plan sponsors overlook the fact that the...more
A recently decided US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit case, Ryan S. v. UnitedHealth Group, Inc., offers some useful insights on the enforcement by private litigants of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act...more
While the sweltering roil of temporary regulatory changes related to the COVID-19 pandemic may have cooled and the initial burst of SECURE 2.0 steam begins to dissipate, sponsors of employee benefit plans should keep their...more
To all those who work in the employee benefits arena, whether in legal, finance, benefits administration, payroll, tax, human resources, or many other disciplines, this is our annual reminder to celebrate the valuable and...more
As it is often said, “the only constant in the world is constant change,” so it is important for health plan fiduciaries to periodically review the fundamentals for consistency and compliance to avoid risk and costly...more
Under Section 404 of ERISA, plan fiduciaries must act for the exclusive benefit of plan participants and beneficiaries and use plan assets only to provide benefits and defray reasonable expenses of administering the plan. In...more