How Healthcare Reform Will Affect You and Your Employees
Categories - From Our Newsletter, News
Just about everyone in the country is wondering how the passage of the health reform bill by Congress will affect him or her. According to Kaiser Health News, this historic legislation could “have an effect on almost every citizen.” People, even those who are unemployed, will be able to get medical care. But professionals who have been enjoying the best health coverage available may possibly see their benefits dwindle.
What Are the Immediate Changes?
There are certain things that will happen in the first 6 months after the bill is actually signed into law:
- Insurance companies will not be allowed to put lifetime limits on coverage. This means that people with chronic health conditions will never “use up” all of their insurance coverage.
- People with children on their company insurance plan can keep unmarried dependents enrolled until they turn 26. This is very important because of the number of college graduates who are unemployed.
- Insurance plans will be required to cover preventative health services like colonoscopies, osteoporosis screening, screening for things like high blood pressure, diabetes, and sexually transmitted diseases and quit-smoking counseling.
- Pre-existing serious health conditions can no longer prevent people from getting health insurance. They will be able to purchase coverage from a government-subsidized exchange. However, this coverage will not be available until 2014.
Health Insurance Will Be Required
Uninsured people will be required to purchase health insurance by 2014. Subsidies will be available that reduce the premiums subject to income limits.
Penalties will be imposed on people who do not purchase insurance that could be as much as 1% of their income.
Changes to Medicare
Tighter controls may be put on decisions for care that are considered too costly. The care provided to older people may even be restricted. Cancer screening could be denied for older citizens.
The Medicare system will see a huge hit because approximately one-half of the health reform costs for the next 10 years will come from the Medicare budget.
Pre-Existing Illnesses and Loss of Coverage
Starting this year, the health reform bill will ensure that insurers can’t deny coverage to any child based on existing health problems. In 2014, this will be expanded to include all applicants.
Within the first six months of the bill being signed into law, an insurer cannot drop policyholders except in cases of fraud.
Longer Wait Time to See Your Doctor
Millions more people will have access to health care but the number of healthcare workers will not grow quickly enough to keep up. You can expect to wait about twice as long to get in to see a doctor as it did in the past.
Changes to the Coverage You Get from Your Employer
Employers who offer high-value, ‘cadillac’ health plans will probably begin to cut back on those benefits. If they don’t do so by 2019, they could face fines from the government. This could possibly mean no more vision or dental coverage or going to a specialist without a referral from your family doctor.
Benefits for Women
With this new health bill, insurers will have to cover maternity care the same way they cover any other medical procedure, but not until 2014. Employers will also be required to allow break time for mothers who are nursing and a private place where they can use their breast pump.
Losing or Leaving Your Job
If someone quits or loses their job, the same exchanges that help lower income people purchase insurance will be available. This means when you leave your job, you don’t necessarily have to pay the high COBRA costs. This is very important for people with a pre-existing condition. You may even be able to get free health coverage under some circumstances.
Higher Taxes
In 2013, Medicare payroll tax will go up for incomes over $200,000 a year.
As these changes come about, the staff at myBenefitStatements is ready to help you communicate… why not give us a call today!
Benefits Communication and Education Grow in Importance
Categories - From Our Newsletter
Employees who receive quality benefits education are more likely to feel valued by their employer and have a positive perception of their company. They also say they’d tend to stay with their current employer, even if offered a position with similar pay and benefits elsewhere. This testament to the importance of benefits communications comes from a survey commissioned by insurer Unum and conducted by Harris Interactive, and shows the connection between how well employees understand their benefits and how engaged and motivated they are at work.
In addition to the content and presentation of the communications materials themselves, the survey indicates that giving employees enough time to review communications, as well as using a variety of media, are keys to communications’ effectiveness. Employees who had more than three weeks to review benefits education materials were far more likely to say that they had enough time to make informed decisions. And, using at least three different forms of media-such as meetings, printed materials and Web site tools-enhances communication effectiveness because it recognizes different learning styles and helps ensure that the messages sought to be conveyed will be heard by all employees.
These themes from the Unum survey are particularly significant today, because employee benefits communications have taken on increased importance, for a number of reasons-
Employees must make more choices for their benefits today than ever before. In previous generations, employers that offered employee benefits typically provided a health plan, a pension plan, and some life and disability insurance. As health care costs exploded in the 1980s and 1990s, and increasingly shifted to employees, employers introduced multiple health plan options requiring employee choice. Simultaneously, in most workplaces, the company retirement plan morphed from a defined benefit pension plan to a 401(k) plan, requiring employees to choose whether to participate, how much to contribute, and what funds to invest in. Supplemental life and disability options became more available to most employees, along with an array of other voluntary benefits choices (group legal, long-term care, group auto/homeowners, etc.).
Given the array of benefits choices employees now face, education and communication efforts have taken on huge significance, since decision-making that is informed is most likely to result in appropriate choices. While the benefits choices available today do address employees’ individual needs, they also generally pass on to employees more responsibility. This trend first surfaced in the shift from defined benefit pension plans to defined contribution 401(k) plans, in which employees bear the investment risk. More recently, employers’ increasing adoption of consumer-directed health plans takes a similar path. Employees enrolled in these plans shoulder more of the financial responsibility for their ongoing health care costs, in exchange for a lower plan premium. For both 401(k) plans and consumer-directed health plans, education and communications supply the information that is critical to exercising the increased level of responsibility employees bear.
Getting the best value for one’s money is always important, but it’s even more so in a difficult economy. When money is tight-like it has been both for companies and employees lately-we want to make sure we spend our dollars wisely…and information is key to making good and appropriate purchases. Surveys indicate that most people spend much more time on other consumer purchases than they do on employee benefits enrollment-which, for many employees, is among their most significant purchases in any given year. Benefits communications can help employees make good spending decisions about their employee benefits.
- Today’s benefits plans are more complicated than ever before. Consumer-directed health plans, for example, work dramatically differently than plans employees were covered under only a few years ago. These plans offer tax advantages to employees, but this too adds a layer of complexity for employees to understand. Again, effective communications can make a difference in enabling employees to get the greatest benefit from these plans.
Introducing Open Enrollment Forms
Categories - News, Product Introductions, Why myBenefitStatements?
You know myBenefitStatements for creating high quality, easy to read, total compensation statements. Now we have created easy to follow benefits enrollment forms for your next open enrollment period.
Recent studies show that many employees are confused or frustrated while selecting their benefits (Employee Benefit News, April 1, 2009, p. 17). In some cases self-service online enrollment has become “no service.” Use our open enrollment forms in conjunction with employee meetings/seminars to ensure your employees make informed benefits decisions.
Our new benefits enrollment forms are…
- Customizable to show your benefit offerings
- Easy to understand
- Full-color—enlisting your employees’ attention
- Easy to complete and return on the spot during elections meetings
With more than 20 years of employee communications experience, myBenefitStatements is your skilled partner. We collaborate with hundreds of brokers and employers all over the country to create effective employee communications tools. Hard copy, easy to complete forms from myBenefitStatements are one of our specialties.
To see samples and request a price quote, visit www.myBenefitStatements.com or contact Sarah Fakan at (800) 865-4485 ext. 104. If email is more convenient, please send us an email at Info@myBenefitStatments.com
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