More Cities Drop Spousal Coverage

“We were out of options,” City Manager Jeff Emory said. “I’ve been a city manager for 27 years, and (dealing with) the costs of health care is probably the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced.”

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article23411439.html#storylink=cpy

Medical Identity Theft Can Kill You!

"The Growing Problem of Identity Theft"

"It's like an unlimited credit card that gets you 'free' access to expensive services and drugs," said Bob Gregg, CEO of ID Experts, which provides breach-response services to major U.S. companies. "Everyone thinks about credit cards and bank accounts, but medical identity theft can be much more damaging and extremely hard to fix."  Full Article

Anthem's 80 Million records and now Premera, which provides health insurance to residents of Washington state and Alaska, adds 11 million more exposed records.  It's a crazy crazy world out there, and it's only going to get worse.

Medical identity theft is the number one thing we as a nation should be concerned with; it has financial implications and could even kill you!

Click here for a way to monitor and restore your true identity if you are compromised.

Wellness is More Than Dollars and Cents

Many in the benefits industry are saying that wellness doesn't end up saving money on health insurance premiums, and they are right, in many cases. But wellness programs done right, with employer buy-in, employee buy-in, and a healthy dose of fun can make a big impact in the employees lives at the very least.  Whether or not health care premiums or utilization rates and dollars are impacted is debatable, but making the employees happy and healthy has intangible benefits that are no less important.  One city in Colorado implemented different contests throughout the year, worked with their parks dept, and partnered with the local hospital to work on wellness on all fronts.

“About two-thirds of all our employees participated,” said City Clerk Linda Smith. “It was a great success.”  Spearheading the campaign, Smith explained that employees worked together in rotating three-member teams to help keep them motivated throughout the year. She said dietary lectures from hospital officials, cholesterol screenings from health department officials and exercise programs designed by park officials were all key to making the program successful.  

Disability Insurance may Cut Work Comp Claims

"This is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy!"

When someone legitimately gets hurt on the job a caring employer moves heaven and earth to help that person and their family.  But what about when an employee gets hurt on the weekend, but "slips" on Monday?  If they are broke, desperate, and/or looking to get over on an employer, what is an employer supposed to do.

What if you could help your employees feel like they weren't desperate when an unexpected injury happens?  What if you could help your employees make sure they had money coming in to pay their mortgage, their power bill, and put food on the table.

Voluntary Short Term Disability and Accident Insurance provides these benefits whether employer or employee paid.

For a great read on the statistics check out this article on SmallBizTrends.

The 4 Most Common Business Fraud Schemes

http://www.businessfraudprevention.org/fraud_statistic.html

Now that I've started offering LegalShield as a benefit my eyes have been opened to just how much hassle and trouble small and large businesses go through with employee theft.

Number 1 - Expense Account Fraud
Number 2 - Check Tampering
Number 3 - Payroll Schemes
Number 4 - False Billing and Vendor Invoices

All of these are ways that unscrupulous employees can take advantage of a trusting boss.  With LegalShield for Small Business plans, you can have access to an Attorney for a flat monthly rate to deal with these and other problems that crop up.  LegalShield also offers the best Identity Theft AND Restoration around.

The full article can be found HERE.

5 Regulation Changes for Employers With Self-Funded Health Insurance

There are changes coming in how a Self Funded Business Entity needs to report to the Federal Government in 2015 and 2016.

1. Section 6055 and Section 6056 will help determine who gets subsidies or not.
2. The 5500 report is changing.  The rules are different for under 100 lives, which is who I deal with often.
3. Traditional Reinsurance Tax - for Self Funded payers they are responsible for this fee instead of the insurance carrier.  Allied, Assurant, and others help with this requirement.
4. PCORI Fees - Again this fee is built into some plans, but not others.  You need to be in the know; it's increasing next year, and then will be tied to inflation.
5. Health Plan ID Requirement - Small Businesses (under $5 million in claims) have until November of 2015 to comply.

For the full article CLICK HERE.
If you have any questions about this or any other Self Funding issue - EMAIL ME.

Poor Employee Communication cost $173K

A very small oversight cost FedEx $173,000 when they terminated an employee for failing to comply with their policies to approve a Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) request for time off.
What they didn't know was that if your policies aren't properly communicated to an employee you are liable to legal action.

The employee had health problems, notified them that she needed time off under FMLA.  FedEx had no problem with this.  They asked her to fill out paperwork and provide some medical proof of illness.  She didn't return the paperwork, and was ultimately terminated.

The fault came in when FedEx did not clearly lay out their policies if she, or any other employee didn't comply.  So her day in court came, and she won a wrongful termination suit.  HR is getting trickier and trickier these days; you need backup from outsourced payroll and HR experts.  You also need help communicating with employees.  Be warned.

Sign up for HR Morning, I get very interesting tidbits of info every day that can directly impact my clients positively and negatively.

Source: http://www.hrmorning.com/oversight-on-fmla-form-costs-employer-173k/?pulb=1