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 September Monthly Minute highlights the DOL’s extension of existing cybersecurity guidance to health and welfare plans and also addresses the new HIPAA reproductive health privacy rule....more
by Becky Achten New guidance from the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) affirms that both sides—retirement plans and welfare plans—must take steps to secure participant data from cybercrime. In 2021 the...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
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
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
According to CMS, annual health care spending in the United States reached about $4.5 trillion in 2022, 9% of which (about $405 billion) was spent on prescription drugs.[1] CMS also reports that in 2022, 18% of annual health...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
As mentioned in our recent blog post, the recently filed class action lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson (Lewandowski v. Johnson & Johnson et. al., D.N.J., No. 1:24-cv-00671 (Feb. 5, 2024)) over alleged excessive prescription...more
“Georgia” on your mind? As we look towards the upcoming Masters golf tournament weekend, our minds turn to the condition of the greens (exquisite), the players tee off order (does afternoon help or hinder Tiger on an expected...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
It’s hard to believe that 2024 is well underway! That means it’s a perfect time to think about an issue that might get lost in the summertime and (dare I already say) year-end shuffles: fiduciary committees. ERISA imposes...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
Many medical benefit plan fiduciaries contract with pharmacy benefit managers (“PBMs”) to administer the prescription drug portion of their health plans, placing the PBM in charge of day-to-day management of the programs....more
The first complaint was filed in what is expected to be a wave of litigation alleging breach of fiduciary duty in selecting and monitoring welfare plan vendors. While the facts of this particular case may make it somewhat...more
Fiduciary committees have long been established in connection with retirement plans to manage the investment, legal compliance, and operational risks that can arise under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974,...more
The Department of Labor recently announced the 2024 inflation adjustments for ERISA-related penalties applicable to health and welfare and retirement plans. Applicable penalties increased for 2024 as follows...more
On January 2, 2024, McDermott filed an amicus curiae brief on behalf of the ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC) and the United States Chamber of Commerce (Chamber) in United Behavioral Health v. David K., No. 23-586, in the US...more
It was a lively year for health benefits. Our Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Group unpacks 2023, from the end of the COVID-19 emergencies to the much-anticipated Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act...more
In the second episode of our three-part Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation podcast miniseries, hosts Lynne Wakefield and Lydia Parker discuss key health and welfare plan developments as we close out 2023 and head...more
This newsletter provides updates employers should be aware of heading into 2024, including an outline of the updated 2024 retirement and welfare plan limits, instructions related to the “gag order” attestation requirements...more
On Friday, November 3, the Federal Register published the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) latest attempt to redefine who is an “investment advice fiduciary” under ERISA. In conjunction with the regulatory proposal, the...more
The time may have come to add a welfare plan committee to your company’s governance of employee benefit plans. New legal obligations and other developments impose fiduciary risks for welfare plans similar to what already...more