Total Rewards | Risk Management
Employers that offer health benefits to their employees may also offer wellness programs to contain health plan costs, help employees stay healthy and increase employees’ knowledge as health care consumers. Wellness programs also referred to as: disease-management programs, employee wellness plans or programs, corporate wellness programs, or a range of other names, take many forms.
On Wednesday, March 1, the Department of Labor (DOL) proposed a 60-day delay of the applicability date (currently April 10) of the Fiduciary Rule, which would also include a delay to the Prohibited Transaction Exemptions, specifically the Best Interest Contract Exemption. The DOL has listed two comment periods: a 15-day comment period on the proposed 60-day delay and a 45-day comment period applicable to the concerns expressed in the Feb.3 Presidential Memorandum directing the DOL to review the rule.
Risk Management | Benefits | Employee Relations
Don't Forget to Provide Forms 1095-B & 1095-C by March 31st! Applicable large employers (ALEs) with 50 or more full-time employees including equivalents (FTEs) in 2014 must comply with Section 6056 reporting. ALEs must complete and distribute a Form 1095-C to full-time employees by March 31, 2016. The forms may be mailed, electronically delivered or delivered by hand. If electronically delivered, the employee must affirmatively consent to this form of delivery. If hand delivered, best practice is to receive the employee’s signature of receipt.
Q: Does an employer’s cash-out option (i.e., cash-in-lieu of benefits) have any impact on the coverage’s affordability under the employer mandate? A: Yes. As background, under the employer mandate, the employer must offer at least one affordable, minimum value plan to all full-time employees, or risk a penalty. Affordability is based on the cost to the full-time employee for single-only coverage. Generally speaking, coverage is affordable if the cost of single-only coverage does not exceed 9.5 percent of that employee’s W2 wages or 9.5 percent of that employee’s rate-of-pay. (There is also a way to determine affordability based on the federal poverty line.)
Risk Management | Benefits | Employee Relations
On Aug. 11, 2015, the IRS published a draft version of Publication 5223, General Rules and Specifications for Affordable Care Act Substitute Forms 1095-A, 1094-B, 1095-B, 1094-C and 1095-C.
