Health Care Reform

Subscribe to Health Care Reform via RSS

Less than one week after hearing oral arguments on seven consolidated cases in which non-profit organizations challenged the opt-out process for religious organizations opposing the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage mandate, the United States Supreme Court took the unusual action of ordering the lawyers on both sides to brief additional issues. The Court’s Order asked…

With final ADA and GINA wellness program regulations expected this year from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), 2016 looks to be an important year for regulation of these programs. However, program features like health risk assessments (HRAs) and biometric screenings have already become popular components of employer-sponsored health plans. In many cases, employers…

While taxpayers were completing their holiday shopping and preparing to spend time with their families, Congress and the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) were busy changing laws governing employee benefit plans and issuing new guidance under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”). The results of that year-end governmental activity include the following:

Protecting Americans …

As the calendar year comes to an end, group health plan sponsors must remember that if they took advantage of the ACA relief of IRS Notice 2014-55, amendments to their cafeteria plans by year end are needed.

Notice 2014-55 was effective as of September 18, 2014, and it allowed participants to revoke a cafeteria…

Background 

Effective 2018, Section 4980I of the IRC — the so-called “Cadillac Tax,” which was added to the IRC by the ACA — will impose a 40% nondeductible excise tax on the aggregate cost of applicable employer-sponsored health coverage that exceeds an annually-adjusted statutory dollar limit. For 2018, the dollar limits are $10,200 for self-only…

An “applicable large employer” is subject to a penalty if either (1) the employer fails to offer to its full-time employees (and their dependents) the opportunity to enroll in minimum essential coverage (MEC) under an eligible employer-sponsored plan and any full-time employee obtains a subsidy for health coverage on a government exchange (Section 4980H(a) liability)…

One strategy for minimizing exposure to the employer shared responsibility penalties under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is to minimize the number of “full-time employees” – that is, the number of employers working 30 or more hours per week on average. Employers can accomplish this through reducing the number of hours certain current and future…

The Internal Revenue Service was authorized to issue regulations extending health insurance subsidies to coverage purchased through health insurance exchanges run by the federal government or a state, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a 6-3 decision. King v. Burwell, No. 14-114 (June 25, 2015).

This means employers cannot avoid employer shared responsibility…

Since April, employers have been mulling over proposed wellness program regulations issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to address certain issues under the American with Disabilities Act (ADA). We briefly summarized those proposed rules, and remind readers that there still is time to submit comments to the EEOC in order to seek…

As you may already know, generally, each “applicable large employer” (see our article Health Care Reform: Employers Should Prepare Now for 2015 to Avoid Penalties to determine if you are an applicable large employer) is required to file information returns with the IRS (Form 1094-C) and provide statements to its employees (Form 1095-C) about the…