September 3, 2010

HR Fact Friday: Long Term Care Benefits – A Less Visible Part of Healthcare Reform

Filed under: Benefits — Tags: , , , , , — Paul @ 7:17 am

The recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as healthcare reform is a complicated piece of legislation with many parts. 

One part, that hasn’t gotten a lot of press, is the Community Living Assistance Services and Support (CLASS) Act.  

CLASS creates a national voluntary long term care insurance program.   The program is set to begin in 2011.  The Department of Health and Human Services still needs to develop guidelines, so we don’t know much about it.   However, employers should begin to think about whether they’ll participate in the program and stay tuned as facts become available. The program is to be fully funded by employees and benefits will be available to employees after they have paid premiums for at least 60 months. 

 CLASS provides small supplementary benefits for in home care, and is not enough to pay for assisted living facilities or nursing homes.

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August 21, 2009

HR Fact Friday: COBRA Enrollment Doubles After Launch of Subsidy Program

Filed under: COBRA — Tags: , , , , , — Paul @ 6:54 am

Enrollments in COBRA (health continuation coverage) rose from less than 20% to nearly 40%  since the U.S. government enacted a new subsidy program, according to a report by Hewitt Associates, a consulting firm.

Signed into law in February 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provides for a 65% subsidy for COBRA continuation premiums for up to 9 months for workers who have been involuntarily terminated. To qualify for the subsidy, individuals must have a qualifying event for COBRA coverage that is the employee’s involuntary termination during the period beginning September 1, 2008 and ending December 31, 2009.

Hewitt looked at COBRA enrollment activity for 200 large employers both before and after the enactment of the program. From March 2009 to June 2009, monthly COBRA enrollment rates for Americans eligible for the subsidy averaged 38%, up from 19% for the period of September 2008 through February 2009.

Hewitt estimates that without the subsidy, the average worker would spend $8,800 a year in COBRA healthcare costs. With the subsidy, the average worker would spend about $3,000 a year.

Source: HR.BLR.com 8/19/2009

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March 6, 2009

HR Fact Friday: Survey Finds Nearly 20 Percent of Employers Plan to Drop Health Benefits

Filed under: Insurance — Tags: , , , , , , , — Paul @ 11:15 am

A sign of the troubled times is that most new HR related survey data tends to fall on the negative side. Here is the latest case in point and it is sobering news indeed for employees of small businesses who currently have the option of enrolling in an employer provided health benefit plan.

Nineteen percent of employers responding to a new Hewitt Associates survey are planning to stop offering health benefits over the next three to five years, nearly five times as many as the 4 percent that said they were planning an exit strategy last year.

For those employers planning to continue to provide health benefits, keeping employees healthy has become the primary workforce issue in 2009, up from the number 2 position in 2008, according to Lincolnshire, Illinois-based Hewitt’s survey, “The Road Ahead: Emerging Health Trends 2009.”

(more…)

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