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  • Supreme Court continues to wrestle with questions on benefits

    January 1, 2010

    Two Supreme Court decisions in 2008 Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Glenn, 128 S.Ct. 2343 and LaRue v. DeWolff, Boberg & Assocs., Inc., 128 S.Ct. 1020) were intended to provide final answers to questions that had vexed benefits professionals for years. Unfortunately, to one degree or another, the decisions raised as many questions as they answered and have actually spawned new litigation.

  • Transportation, other IRS dollar limits remain unchanged for 2010

    November 10, 2009

    Next year’s dollar limits that apply to employer-provided transportation plans will stay the same as this year’s, the IRS has decided.

  • Relief provided to safe harbor plans when business hardships occur

    September 1, 2009

    The IRS has issued a proposed rule to allow employers sponsoring safe harbor non-elective plans to suspend such contributions at the beginning of a plan year if a substantial business hardship occurs and if other conditions are satisfied. Safe harbor plans include:

  • Legal Alert: Massachusetts’ health reform eyes premium contribution audits

    June 5, 2009

    A cornerstone of the Massachusetts Health Care Reform Act is its “fair share contribution” requirement, under which employers with 11 or more full-time equivalent employees at Massachusetts locations must either make a “fair and reasonable premium contribution” to a group health plan, or pay to the Commonwealth an “annual fair share employer contribution” not to exceed $295 per full-time equivalent.

  • Health care reform, piece by piece

    June 2, 2009

    Recently enacted legislation appears to be the beginning of a trend in which the federal government is using the existing system of employer-provided health care to provide additional benefits to the uninsured and the under-insured.

  • Legal Alert: Navigating the 2009 RMD relief requirements

    May 29, 2009

    The Internal Revenue Code generally requires that plan participants begin to receive required minimum distributions no later than the April 1 following the later of their reaching age 70 1/2 or retiring.

  • Investment advice regs on hold again

    May 26, 2009

    The Labor Department announced on Friday a second extension for public comment on final regulations that would permit 401(k) and other retirement plan fiduciaries to provide more advice to plan participants under the Pension Protection Act of 2006. The new deadline is Nov. 18, 2009.

  • DOL rolls out e-application for COBRA appeals

    May 26, 2009

    The Labor Department recently launched a new Web page for its application to request officials to review denials of the COBRA premium subsidy under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

  • TARP funds could breathe life into insurers

    May 26, 2009

    Leading U.S. life insurers received preliminary approval for up to $22 billion in government bailout loans that the U.S. Treasury Department is said to have earmarked for this sector.

  • Court rules against crediting maternity leave in pension lawsuit

    May 19, 2009

    The Supreme Court ruled May 18 that women who took maternity leave before the enactment of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 don’t have a legal claim in requiring employers to apply that leave on pension accruals.

  • Legal Alert: Deadline approaches for mental health and substance abuse mandates

    May 15, 2009

    From a historical perspective, employer health plans and private health insurers have provided more limited coverage for mental illnesses and substance abuse (if any) as compared to other medical conditions.

  • Legal Alert: The COBRA Subsidy Scramble: A Race to Comply

    May 11, 2009

    Plan sponsors, multiemployer plans, insurance carriers and their advisors are scrambling to implement the new COBRA subsidy, which was only recently signed into law, but requires action by April 18.

  • Legal Alert: Group health plans will face challenges with GINA

    May 8, 2009

    Plan sponsors and administrators must prepare their group health plans to comply with new restrictions on their collection, use and disclosure of genetic information applicable to group health plans under Title I of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008.

  • Legal Alert: HIPAA reform raises the bar on privacy compliance

    May 1, 2009

    Group health plans and their sponsors routinely rely on business associates with whom they want to be able to share “protected health information,” as defined by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.

  • Legal Alert: Layoffs may increase retirement plan costs

    April 24, 2009

    While employers are actively reviewing the nature of employee terminations for COBRA, they should also be carefully considering the number of participants who may have been terminated from qualified retirement plans, and whether or not a partial termination has occurred.

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