Earlier this week, members of health plans for two different employers filed a potential class action lawsuit against United Healthcare regarding cross-plan offsetting. This case comes nearly 18 months after United lost a similar case before the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals brought by care providers. This new case, Scott et al. v ...
Earlier this month, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) and Health and Human Services (“HHS”) released a proposed rule which provides more flexibility for grandfathered health plans to change cost-sharing requirements. A grandfathered health plan is generally a group health plan that has continuously provided coverage since March 23 ...
In our March blog post, we discussed the relief provisions for participants in defined contribution plans granted by Congress through the CARES Act, including coronavirus-related distributions (CRDs). The IRS has recently issued Notice 2020-50, which amended the definition of qualified individual (as discussed in our prior blog post) and ...
Last month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) issued its final rule under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act that rescinded certain protections afforded to LGBTQ individuals and persons with limited English proficiency. In the same rule, HHS also removed burdensome disclosure requirements for health plans. Only ...
The economic downturn created by COVID-19 has caused many employers to reduce costs across the board, including making cuts to employee compensation through benefit plans. Some employers have considered making mid-year reductions to safe harbor contributions, but are either prohibited or uncertain if those amendments are permissible under ...
Last month, the IRS issued a proposed rule that would expand the ability of health reimbursement accounts (“HRAs”) to reimburse employees tax-free for care or expenses from direct primary care arrangements (“DPCA”) and health care sharing ministries (“HCSM”). The proposed rule would allow payments for DPCA and for membership in ...
In our March Blog post, we discussed the relief provisions for participants in defined contribution plans granted by the Congress through the (at the time) newly enacted CARES Act. As you are by now more than likely aware, the CARES Act permitted plan sponsors to make several discretionary amendments, giving participants greater access to ...
In IRS Notice 2020-51, the IRS provides much anticipated guidance on the CARES Act provision waiving 2020 required minimum distributions (RMDs). Much of the guidance in the IRS Notice deals with the beyond the scenes nuts and bolts of how the RMD waiver and any repayments of RMDs taken earlier this year would work. But there are a number of items that ...
In what seems like ages ago, back in the summer of 2019, the United States Preventive Services Task Force (“USPSTF”) recommended that health plans cover pre-exposure prophylaxis (“PrEP”) for persons who are at high risk of HIV acquisition. Under the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), USPSTF recommendations must be covered by ...
In a prior blog post, we discussed how COVID-19 presented a potential opportunity for employers to set up a leave-sharing program for those affected by COVID-19. At that time, we discussed IRS guidance related to major disaster leave-sharing programs. Those programs, if a very specific set of circumstances are met, permit employees to make a ...