Under a common strategy for controlling group health care plan costs, employers sometimes adopt arrangements under which an employee is offered cash as an incentive to waive coverage. These arrangements are colloquially...more
8/25/2015
/ Affordable Care Act ,
Cost-Sharing ,
Employer Group Health Plans ,
Employer Mandates ,
Final Rules ,
Flexible Spending Accounts ,
Form 1095 ,
Health Insurance ,
Health Insurance Exchanges ,
Incentives ,
Individual Mandate ,
Minimum Essential Coverage ,
Minimum Value Plans ,
Opt-Outs ,
Penalties ,
Reporting Requirements ,
Safe Harbors ,
Shared Responsibility Rule ,
Subsidies ,
Waivers
As we reported last week, the IRS recently issued draft 2015 Instructions for Forms 1094-C and 1095-C. These instructions are of interest to applicable large employers who must report their compliance with the Affordable Care...more
8/19/2015
/ Affordable Care Act ,
Employer Group Health Plans ,
Employer Mandates ,
Form 1094 ,
Form 1095 ,
Health Savings Accounts ,
HRA ,
IRS ,
Large Employer ,
Minimum Essential Coverage ,
Reporting Requirements ,
Section 6055 ,
Shared Responsibility Rule ,
Supplemental Insurance
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) imposes information reporting rules on providers of minimum essential coverage, e.g., insurance carriers and self-funded plans, and on applicable large employers, i.e., those employers that are...more
7/27/2015
/ Affordable Care Act ,
Employer Group Health Plans ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employer Mandates ,
Good Faith ,
Health Insurance ,
Healthcare ,
IRS ,
Minimum Essential Coverage ,
New Legislation ,
Penalties ,
Reporting Requirements ,
Section 6722 ,
Self-Funded Health Plans ,
Trade Preferences Extension Act (TPEA)
Alden Bianchi, Chair of the our Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Practice, will provide a weekly installment on the complex reporting obligations outlined by the Affordable Care Act for health insurance carriers and...more
7/20/2015
/ Affordable Care Act ,
Compliance ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Employer Group Health Plans ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employer Mandates ,
Exceptions ,
Good Faith ,
Health Insurance ,
Individual Mandate ,
IRS ,
Minimum Essential Coverage ,
Penalties ,
Popular ,
Reporting Requirements ,
Self-Funded Health Plans
In this volume, we have collected the 52 weekly blog posts that comprise the series entitled, The Affordable Care Act—Countdown to Compliance for Employers. The series appeared in the Mintz Levin Employment Matters Blog...more
2/25/2015
/ Affordable Care Act ,
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Cafeteria Plans ,
Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) ,
Employer Group Health Plans ,
Employer Mandates ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Full-Time Employees ,
Health Insurance ,
Honeywell International ,
HSA ,
Minimum Value Plans ,
Pay or Play ,
Self-Insured Health Plans ,
Shared Responsibility Rule ,
Wellness Programs
The Affordable Care Act requires applicable large employers to make broad-based offers of group health insurance coverage to substantially all their full-time employees or face potential tax penalties. (The term “applicable...more
As applicable large employers grapple with the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) employer shared responsibility (pay-or-play) rules, two questions arise with notable frequency...more
12/8/2014
/ Affordable Care Act ,
Cafeteria Plans ,
Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) ,
Employer Group Health Plans ,
Employer Mandates ,
Flexible Spending Accounts ,
IRS ,
Non-Discrimination Rules ,
Pay or Play ,
Public Health Service Act ,
Shared Responsibility Rule
Over the last couple of months, we have followed and reported on a particular ACA compliance strategy under which an employer subject to the Affordable Care Act’s employer shared responsibility (or “pay-or-play”) rules...more
Last year, the Department of Labor and the Treasury Department/IRS (Departments) issued guidance on the application of certain of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance market reforms to health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs),...more
In a previous post, we described an Affordable Care Act compliance strategy—referred to commercially as a “minimum value plan” or “MVP”—that involves an offer of group health plan coverage that, while similar in most respects...more
In a surprise move, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced an indefinite delay in enforcement of regulations pertaining to “health plan enumeration and use of the Health Plan Identifier (HPID) in HIPAA...more
For applicable large employers (i.e., employers who employed at least 50 full-time and full-time equivalent employees on business days during the preceding calendar year) endeavoring to comply with the Affordable Care Act’s...more
7/21/2014
/ Affordable Care Act ,
Employer Group Health Plans ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employer Mandates ,
Final Rules ,
Full-Time Employees ,
Health Insurance ,
Look-Back Measurement Period ,
Part-Time Employees ,
Seasonal Employment ,
Variable Hour Employees
The Employer Shared Responsibility provisions of the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) generally require “applicable large employers” (i.e., employers who employed at least 50 full-time and full-time equivalent employees on...more
7/16/2014
/ Affordable Care Act ,
Contractors ,
Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Employee Benefits ,
Employer Contributions ,
Employer Group Health Plans ,
Employer Mandates ,
Federal Contractors ,
IRS ,
Service Contract Act ,
Subcontractors ,
U.S. Treasury ,
Wage and Hour
It was just over a year ago that the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled, “Employers Eye Bare-Bones Health Plans Under New Law,” which highlighted a compliance strategy to minimize employer exposure for...more
Whether a group health plan provides minimum value is central to the application of the Affordable Care Act’s employer shared responsibility rules. The particulars of the role of minimum value in determining assessable...more
Commencing with plan and policy years beginning on or after January 1, 2014, the Affordable Care Act amends the Public Health Service Act (“PHS Act”) to make three important changes to the rules governing health insurance...more
So much attention has been paid to the issuance of the final employer shared responsibility regulations that some might have missed the news that final regulations were recently issued under another of the Affordable Care...more
The regulation of marriage was historically presumed to be the exclusive domain of the states. Since 1996, however, the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 (“DOMA”) changed this presumption in two important respects...more
7/5/2013
/ Civil Unions ,
COBRA ,
Compliance ,
DOMA ,
Domestic Partnership ,
Due Process ,
Employee Benefits ,
Employer Group Health Plans ,
Equal Protection ,
Health Insurance ,
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ,
Same-Sex Marriage ,
SCOTUS ,
US v Windsor
A May 10 Wall Street Journal article, “Employers Eye Bare-Bones Health Plans Under New Law” (see the associated video on WSJ Live), highlighted a compliance strategy to minimize employer exposure for assessable payments under...more
A key policy goal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the “Act”) is the expansion of health insurance coverage to all Americans. The concepts of “minimum value” and its correlate “actuarial value” speak to the...more
Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the “Act”), the federal government, state governments, insurers, employers, and individuals all share responsibility to make affordable health insurance coverage widely...more
The core policy goals of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the “Act”)—on which there is near universal consensus—are threefold: expand health care coverage; increase the quality of medical outcomes, and reduce...more
In a set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) posted to the Department of Labor’s website on January 24, the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and Treasury (the “Departments”) put a stop to an approach to...more
Beginning in 2014, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Act) requires “applicable large employers” (i.e., employers with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees) to either offer group health insurance coverage to...more