Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
By Jane Meacham The funded status of the average U.S. corporate pension plan slid to a record low in July, according to several measurements of the health of the plans’ finances. Funding status of the typical plan surveyed for BNY Mellon Pension Summary data touched a low of 68.7 percent, off 2.9 percentage points from […]
Sending a COBRA election notice shortly after an employee began military duty was not evidence that an employer fired the employee due to his military status in violation of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, a federal district court in Arkansas held. In generally rejecting the USERRA claims, the court indicated, among other […]
There is some persistent confusion over what the implementation of the health reform law means for health flexible spending accounts and health savings accounts. The short answer is that with one exception, employers and plan administrators must follow different steps for health FSAs and HSAs. Understanding these steps is crucial, because the time to prepare […]
By Jane Meacham Employers should exercise oversight of third-party administrators, to ensure they distribute accurate plan notifications and information about beneficiary distributions. That’s because in the case of certain errors, the TPA may end up not being defined as a fiduciary, as Judge James Graham in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, ruled in Stark […]
By Jane Meacham Employers and plan administrators may want to err on the side of providing more information, not less. That is one of the messages behind a recent decision by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Western Division. In Arp v. Whirlpool Corp., Case No. 3:12 CV 770 (July 10, […]
Four groups — the ERISA Industry Committee, the American Benefits Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable — filed an amicus brief July 26 to urge 2nd Circuit judges to support the principle of deference to plan administrators’ decisions over benefit plans. When plans reserve discretionary authority in plan documents, courts must […]
An employer whose COBRA/leave policy did not align with a stop-loss policy’s terms continues to be on the hook for a COBRA qualified beneficiary’s medical claims that were rejected by the stop-loss insurer. The employer unsuccessfully appealed a lower court ruling that the claims were ineligible under the policy terms because they did not include […]
With the Olympics in full swing this summer, reruns of The Office have been replaced with reruns of the Olympics (OK, tape-delayed events, but you get the idea). I can only assume this means that every workplace in the entire world is now hosting its very own office-themed Olympics with events ranging from office-chair races to Flonkerton. (In Season 2, […]
Today was the final day for insurers to issue rebates for 2011 premiums (as required by health reform), so employers should know by now whether they got one. The next step employers face is passing the proper amount of the rebate on to employees. When rebates go to employers, the incentives favor applying the rebates to […]
A Colorado-based company that is not a religious organization got a temporary reprieve in complying with the Obama administration’s mandate that health plans cover contraceptives without patient cost sharing, under a new ruling from the U.S. District Court in Colorado. The reform requirement takes effect for non-grandfathered and non-religious employer health plans on Aug. 1. […]