Recently, President Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act into law. Among other things, the law amends the ACA and the Internal Revenue Code so that small businesses will be able to again offer stand-alone health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs). Prior to the ACA, many small employers (not subject to the employer mandates) sponsored ...
As part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), the OCR is charged with conducting periodic audits of covered entities and business associates for compliance with the HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules. During 2011 and 2012, as part of Phase 1 of its audit program, the OCR assessed ...
The ACA prohibits group health plans from having a waiting period in excess of 90 days. The prohibition went into effect for plan years beginning on or after January 1, 2014. Since this rule isn’t new, you may be wondering why I am writing this blog post about it now. In the past several months, I have spoken to several employers who were ...
The IRS issued a Notice today announcing that it is extending the deadline for distribution of Forms 1095-C. Under the Affordable Care Act, all large employers must complete and distribute a Form 1095-C to any employee who was considered a full-time employee for one or more months of the calendar year. The normal deadline for distributing such forms ...
You have a few deadlines looming if you sponsor a retirement plan with a January 1st plan year and your plan contains any of the following features:
401(k) Safe Harbor Notice
If your plan is designed as a safe harbor plan to avoid ADP and/or ACP testing, you must send an annual notice to participants no later than 30 days before the end of the plan ...
By David Pixley
It’s fall, time for the World Series, college football rivalries and of course, the IRS’s annual update to the retirement plan limits. Like last year, there were no dramatic changes made by the IRS in these limits, which are illustrated in our annual retirement plan limit chart. The most substantial change to the chart was the ...
By David Pixley
Under the current ADA and the GINA regulations, incentives for participation in wellness programs are limited to 30% of self-only coverage for the lowest cost group health plan offered by an employer. For purposes of these regulations, when an employer offers its employees, “…more than one group health plan and enrollment in ...
If not, you are likely not alone but need to get it posted because the deadline for posting was October 16th. In an earlier blog post, we discussed what entities may be “covered entities” and subject to the new Section 1557 nondiscrimination rules of the ACA. If you have determined that you are a covered entity subject to ...
Just when you think you have heard it all, HIPAA has a requirement that plan sponsors must send a notice to participants letting them know they have a right to receive a notice of privacy practices. But first, let’s take a step back. HIPAA requires that group health plans distribute a notice of privacy practices to all newly ...
Section 1557 is a new anti-discrimination section added by the ACA that prohibits in certain health programs and activities discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability. At first, the new provision did not receive much attention because we believe some companies saw it and thought “of course we ...