IRS Announces New Benefit Amounts

The Internal Revenue Service announced in Revenue Procedure 2017-58  the annual inflation adjustments for more than 40 tax provisions for 2018, including the tax rate schedules, and other tax changes. This Revenue Procedure provides details about these annual adjustments: 

Federal District Court Asks EEOC to Reconsider its Wellness Regulations

From the Desk of Larry Gudzien 

On August 22,  the U.S.  Federal District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to reconsider its final regulations in regard to the size of the incentive an employer may offer to participate in wellness program without violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA).

Senate Republicans Unveil New Health Bill but Divisions Remain

By ROBERT PEAR and THOMAS  KAPLAN

New York Times

WASHINGTON - Senate Republican leaders unveiled a fresh proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, revising their bill to help hold down insurance costs for consumers while keeping a pair of taxes on high-income people that they had planned to eliminate.

CBO Socres the Senate Version of the AHCA

The Congressional Budget Office and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) have completed an estimate of the direct spending and revenue effects of the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, a Senate amendment in the nature of a substitute to H.R. 1628. CBO and JCT estimate that enacting this legislation would reduce the cumulative federal deficit over the 2017-2026 period by $321 billion. That amount is $202 billion more than the estimated net savings for the version of H.R. 1628 that was passed by the House of Representatives.

Medical FSA 101

To continue our series of commonly used acronyms in insurance, this post will be about FSAs.  Flexible Spending Accounts/Arraignments are similar to HSAs where you can use the pre-taxed money to pay for medical and dental expenses.  There are different types of FSAs. However, today I will only be covering FSAs for medical expenses.

What is an HSA?

As I had mentioned in my 60 Second Update, this week will be for giving an introduction into HSAs, FSAs and HRAs.  Today’s post will cover what is an HSA, how do you qualify for an HSA account and how does an HSA work.

Repeal, Replace … Revise: Your Guide To How A Trump Proposal Might Change ACA Insurance

This article was original published by Kaiser Health News: By Julie Appleby April 13, 2017

Repeal and replace is on-again, off-again, but that doesn’t mean the rules affecting your insurance will remain unchanged.

The Trump administration late Thursday issued a final rule aimed at stabilizing the health law’s insurance marketplace that could have rapid, dramatic effects on people who do not get insurance through work and buy it on the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges.

Level Funded 101

Level Funding is starting to become one of those buzzwords we hear all the time in the insurance industry.  Many insurance experts talk about this becoming the new fully insured model for groups that have a low risk and are tired of over paying in the ACA market.  Because Level funding can get a little tricky, I’ll briefly touch on how level funded plans work and why more and more groups are turning to them. 

What is the Cadillac Tax?

With the AHCA or the ACA repeal and replace bill being stopped, there are still a few provisions of the ACA that are set to go into place in the coming years.  The most talked about is the Cadillac Tax.

The State of the ACA and What to Expect

One common question I have been getting since the day Donald Trump was elected to be President is “When will the Affordable Care Act (ACA) be repealed and will I lose my insurance.”  The short answer to this is you will not lose your insurance, even if you are one of those 20 million people that the gained coverage when the ACA went into place, that the media loves talking about.  Also, don’t expect any changes to occur until 2019 at the earliest or even 2020. To understand why I’ll take you through a very brief civics lesson and then explain some changes you should expect to see.

What is an ERISA Wrap Document? And Why Your Company Probably Needs One

One problem I encounter when meeting with a business owner, controller or HR executive is that the company that I am trying to help does not have the correct compliance documents in place for their health

Proposed ACA Replacement

Today several Republican Senators proposed a partial replacement of the Affordable Care Act. This bill being called the Patient Freedom Act would allow states to opt to stay with the Affordable Care Act or receive similar amounts of Federal money which consumers could use to pay for health insurance or medical care.  The purpose of the bill would be to give that power to the states of how to deal with health care and insurance.

What Changes to Expect to Health Insurance in 2017

With Donald Trump's inauguration this Friday, one hot topic news item is what is going to happen to health insurance under his administration.

Federal Court Issues Nationwide Injunction Against Enforcement of Rules on Gender Identity

On December 31, 2016, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas granted a nationwide preliminary injunction, finding that the gender identity and termination of pregnancy provisions of final regulations under Section 1557 contradict existing law, exceed statutory authority and, as applied to religious entities, likely violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).