Garry Has Soup For Days!
This month, we are bringing you some food favorites of our own Garry Rutledge!
Garry is a member of Saxon's Wealth Management team after having joined Saxon in 2006. He serves as a partner and CIO with over 30 years of experience in the financial planning industry.
When it comes to eating out with the family, he enjoys a good steak and Texas Roadhouse is his place to get it. "The atmosphere is lively and the food is always excellent. I like the bone-in ribeye cooked medium-rare with the sweet potato."
At home, he enjoys his wife's Tortellini Soup, "because it's always a good time to have soup, no matter what the weather. The other reason is that there is enough for leftovers."
Here's what you'll need:
- 3 tablespoons butter or margarine
- 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 2 medium celery stalks, chopped (1 cup)
- 1 medium carrot, chopped (1/2 cup)
- 1 small onion, chopped (1/4 cup)
- 2 cartons (32 oz each) Progresso™ chicken broth (8 cups)
- 4 cups water
- 2 packages (9 oz each) dried chesse-filled tortellini
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 1 teaspoon freshly grated whole nutmeg
- freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Here's how you do it:
- Melt butter in 6-quart Dutch oven over medium-low heat. Cover and cook garlic, celery, carrot and onion in butter 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Stir in broth and water. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Stir in tortellini. Cover and simmer about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until tortellini are tender.
- Stir in parsley, pepper and nutmeg. Cover and simmer 10 minutes. Top each serving with cheese.
Sounds like a great dish Garry! Tell your wife we said "thank you!"
Majority of workers cannot define copay, deductible
Do your employees understand the healthcare acronyms? Vlad Gyster explains how educating your employees can have a major impact on proper usage of healthcare benefits.
Very soon, thousands of employees across the United States will be choosing their health insurance. That’s scary, because there’s an emerging body of data that shows that most people don’t understand the basics of how health plans work. That knowledge gap may be causing some serious issues: From sick people not going to the doctor, to employees over-paying for health insurance.
If you're like most employers, there's a good chance that you're moving to consumer-driven health plan designs that employ a high deductible. In 2006, only one in 10 employees had a general health insurance deductible of $1,000 or more for single coverage. Today, nearly half do.
As adoption accelerates, benefit professionals find themselves in the midst of a developing crisis: Though HDHPs clearly help cut healthcare costs new research indicates that they do so in the worst way possible. Instead of shopping for better prices, sick people are simply not getting the care they need. As one of the study’s authors puts it: “We [didn't] find any evidence [employees] look for a lower cost. They just don't go."
Here's what’s puzzling: This isn't necessarily happening because of cost. This research is based on an employer that fully funded the deductible. As Vox explains: “In some cases, you could chalk this up to a liquidity issue: A worker might not have enough money in her checking account to pay for all the care below the $3,750 deductible. But that explanation doesn't work here: In this case, the employer put a $3,750 subsidy in workers' health savings accounts.”
So, what could it be? There could be many complex reasons. But there could also be a very simple one: 86% of people cannot define deductible, copay, coinsurance and out-of-pocket maximum. And people can’t properly use what they don’t understand.
A central assumption in consumer-driven plan design is that people can get the same care at a lower price and avoid care that they don’t actually need. To do that, employees need to be educated healthcare consumers, and companies have added tools to help. Utilization modeling and cost transparency technologies are becoming more and more broadly available. But there's a much more foundational piece of the puzzle that's been taken for granted.
In a paper published in Journal of Health Economics, researchers found that 86% of participants couldn’t define all of the following four terms on a multiple choice questionnaire:
· Deductible
· Copay
· Coinsurance
· Out-of-pocket maximum
While the healthcare industry is focused on utilization prediction and cost transparency tools, which are hard to create and implement, something quite basic is slipping right under our noses: Teaching people basic terms that they need to know to make informed decisions.
Understanding these terms is a building block of healthcare consumerism, without which a lot starts to unravel. If an employee doesn’t understand the terms that make-up every health plan design, it's hard to convince an employee to even switch to a high deductible health plan, even when it saves the employee money. It may also cause the employee to avoid care that she needs, because she has trouble predicting what she'll pay.
As more employers adopt HDHPs, a troubling reality is on the horizon: A healthcare crisis may be around the corner due to employees not getting the care that they need.
What to do about it
The good news is that healthcare consumerism isn’t a one-time event. It requires ongoing education and now is as good a time as ever to begin.
Here is something completely free you can do:
· Survey your employees to see what percentage understand basic health plan concepts.
· Send a weekly email to all employees defining each healthcare term, one at a time.
· Re-survey your employees with the exact same questions to measure the change.
This alone will give you a measurable starting point, a way to make progress, and measure the progress made.
See the original article from BenefitNews.com Here.
Source:
Gyster, V. (2016, June 27). Majority of workers cannot define copay, deductible [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.benefitnews.com/opinion/majority-of-workers-cannot-define-copay-deductible
Cyberbullies: Worse than Swirlys in the Bathroom Stall?
Insightful post from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) by Jillian Caswell
Technology and an unending stream of social media messages, notifications, and alerts have invaded our personal lives more than ever before – leaving the door wide open for the bullies of yesterday to get off the playground and into the Twittersphere. It’s almost comical to hear of exes who continue to stalk one another on Instagram and we all compare our traditional 9-to-5 careers to the jet setting elite on Snapchat, but have you ever stopped to think how this can impact our work lives? Unfortunately, the reality is the more connected we become, the more insidious bullying, and its close relative harassment, can become. As HR professionals, we have a duty and responsibility to understand not only how technology and social media can hinder business operations such as lost productivity, but also how it creates an environment of opportunity for employees to fall victim to bullying and harassment.
Become Aware and Observant
This goes beyond monitoring your own company’s social media channels! Before you can hope to identify and rectify potential cyberbullying incidents in your workplace, you must first prepare yourself with an understanding of what kinds of harassment and bullying can transpire in the digital realm. If you’re new to social media, there are numerous resources online to get you the crash course you need to become familiar with popular resources such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. Live streaming functionality with outlets such as Periscope and Facebook Live create additional areas of opportunity for workplace bullies to exploit. Knowing how to monitor, identify, and respond swiftly and appropriately to harassment in these mediums is key to building a solid company policy relating expectations for employee interaction with company social media channels as well as harassment policies that are inclusive of online activities, privately or on public channels. There are dozens of masks that the face of cyberbullying can wear, whether it’s an Instagram post poking fun at a specific employee shared with other staff members, a ceaseless spewing of threats on Twitter, or an employee texting explicit content to coworkers. By becoming familiar both with the platforms themselves and the different forms of harassment and bullying that can occur in these environments, you will add another resource to your HR toolkit in navigating potentially sticky employee relations issues.
It may at first feel overwhelming to think of all the different variations of harassment that can play out on the stage of our smart phones and personal devices; however, employers are responsible to ensure they can provide a workplace free of harassment – a bridge that bullying can often rapidly cross over. Cyberbullying is often also more difficult to detect as it can transpire well out of the watchful eyes of the company HR department. In addition to familiarizing yourself with the different social media channels, consider the following suggestions to build a robust defense to cyberbullying:
- Training – For both your HR department and the other staff, it can become quite enlightening to provide trainings on what does and does not constitute harassment. This is also a great opportunity to provide a refresher on company policy relating to bullying and harassment.
- Demonstrate Appropriate Behavior – Take inventory of your own social media use. Are there potentially offensive postings or messages on your personal channels (which we’re sure you’ve already have on a private setting – right?!) or are you yourself aware of (even if not participating in) derogatory commentary circulating online about other staff members?
- Respond Adequately to Violations – Multiple court cases have provided substantial monetary awards to bullied employees who proved their arguments that their employer was aware harassment was occurring. Ensuring appropriate discipline occurs for those violating bullying policies demonstrates company efforts to provide workplaces free of harassment.
What’s Next?
So you’ve brought yourself up to speed with the most popular forms of social media and established a solid company policy with no tolerance for bullying and harassment. Think you’re set? Not always. Social media and technology is evolving and morphing into new formats at the speed of light – meaning that as HR professionals, our organizations rely on us to stay just as current with the latest trends and changes in the digital realm as much as in the office space. Stay current with the changing world of social media and digital communications and you’ll continue to be as effective as you are in all your other HR competencies!
See the original article Here.
Source:
Caswell, J. (2016 September 15). Cyberbullies: worse than swirlys in the bathroom stall? [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://blog.shrm.org/blog/cyberbullies-worse-than-swirlys-in-the-bathroom-stall
Non-drug approaches to pain management prove effective
Helpful insights on pain coping techniques from Industrial Safety & Hygiene News (ISHN)
Data from a review of U.S.-based clinical trials published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings suggest that some of the most popular complementary health approaches — such as yoga, tai chi, and acupuncture — appear to be effective tools for helping to manage common pain conditions. The review was conducted by a group of scientists from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) at the National Institutes of Health.
Millions of Americans suffer from persistent pain that may not be fully relieved by medications. They often turn to complementary health approaches to help, yet primary care providers have lacked a robust evidence base to guide recommendations on complementary approaches as practiced and available in the United States. The new review gives primary care providers — who frequently see patients with chronic pain — tools to inform decision-making on how to help manage that pain.
“For many Americans who suffer from chronic pain, medications may not completely relieve pain and can produce unwanted side effects. As a result, many people may turn to nondrug approaches to help manage their pain,” said Richard L. Nahin, Ph.D., NCCIH’s lead epidemiologist and lead author of the analysis. “Our goal for this study was to provide relevant, high-quality information for primary care providers and for patients who suffer from chronic pain.”
The researchers reviewed 105 U.S.-based randomized controlled trials, from the past 50 years, that were relevant to pain patients in the United States and met inclusion criteria. Although the reporting of safety information was low overall, none of the clinical trials reported significant side effects due to the interventions.
The review focused on U.S.-based trial results on seven approaches used for one or more of five painful conditions — back pain, osteoarthritis, neck pain, fibromyalgia, and severe headaches and migraine — and found promise in the following for safety and effectiveness in treating pain:
- Acupuncture and yoga for back pain
- Acupuncture and tai chi for osteoarthritis of the knee
- Massage therapy for neck pain with adequate doses and for short-term benefit
- Relaxation techniques for severe headaches and migraine.
Though the evidence was weaker, the researchers also found that massage therapy, spinal manipulation, and osteopathic manipulation may provide some help for back pain, and relaxation approaches and tai chi might help people with fibromyalgia.
“These data can equip providers and patients with the information they need to have informed conversations regarding non-drug approaches for treatment of specific pain conditions,” said David Shurtleff, Ph.D., deputy director of NCCIH. “It’s important that continued research explore how these approaches actually work and whether these findings apply broadly in diverse clinical settings and patient populations.”
Read more about this report at nccih.nih.gov/pain_review.
About the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH): NCCIH’s mission is to define, through rigorous scientific investigation, the usefulness and safety of complementary and integrative health approaches and their roles in improving health and health care. For additional information, call NCCIH’s Clearinghouse toll free at 1-888-644-6226, or visit the NCCIH Web site at nccih.nih.gov. Follow us on Twitter (link is external),Facebook (link is external), and YouTube.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
See the original article Here.
Reference
Nahin RL, Boineau R, Khalsa PS, Stussman BJ, Weber WJ. (2016 September 7). Evidence-based evaluation of complementary health approaches for pain management in the United States. Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 2016;91(9):1292-1306. Retrieved from address https://www.ishn.com/articles/104834-non-drug-approaches-to-pain-management-prove-effective
Take out the earbuds
Intriguing artile from Benefits Pro by Marty Traynor
Walk around any workplace and unless there's a safety issue, almost every employee under 50 is wearing earbuds and remains focused on their own personal music zone. What a perfect metaphor for the barriers we must overcome to gain the attention we need for benefit purchase decisions.
With the fall enrollment season approaching, let's consider some of the ways we should work to “remove the buds” and focus employee attention on the process of benefit enrollment.
- Employer's earbuds must come out first. Employees are not the only ones ignoring the importance of benefit-related communications. Employers often think a simple introductory email is sufficient. That kind of communication is enough if the goal is to tell employees about an event. However, in no way does this type of message convey importance or opportunity. You must convince the employer that a well-designed campaign will be a big positive for them, both in terms of employee engagement and happiness with employee benefit options.
- Know your audience. Many otherwise great campaigns have failed because they are tone deaf to their audience. A program benefitting union members better not be littered with “employee” references. The graphics used to illustrate the benefit plan should also be carefully designed to match the demographics of the employee audience. Designers often tend to show “beautiful people,” but benefit plans need to be shown benefitting real people.
- Use multiple approaches to connect with people. You often hear about the importance of multi-channel benefit communications. Unfortunately, we cannot just say, “Alexa, create a multi-channel campaign to teach employees about their benefits and get them to enroll to best meet their needs.” We must do what's next best and create a campaign that gives employees information in multiple ways: web details, calculators, videos, printable pieces with brief, explanatory, and detailed options. Use on-site materials such as break room table tents and bulletin board posters to augment e-campaigns.
- Use “real speak” whenever possible. The benefits business is full of jargon. Studies have shown that words we use all the time are confusing; even a term like “premium” isn't clear. Most people think of premium as an adjective, meaning “expensive, special or high class.” They don't see it as an everyday expenditure, but rather as a luxury type of item. So when we say “your premium is affordable,” employees may immediately think we are trying to scam them. Watch the jargon, and use terms that make sense to employees.
- Get people in front of people. The best way to communicate is in person. Regardless of how effective an employer's enrollment system is, the most effective communications campaigns still have a human element. Personal meetings, group meetings or call center-based enrollments can all add the personal touch. Without a personal touch, a benefit enrollment campaign may seem empty to many employees.
- Make sure employees know what's in it for them. They need to understand the importance of good benefit elections for themselves. This helps ensure they credit their employer for offering a valued program, and ensures they will understand the importance of good choices in enrollment.
Good luck with your fourth quarter enrollments. Earbuds are not noise cancelling headphones, so there is still a great opportunity to break through to employees and make your benefit communications campaigns your best to date.
See the original article Here.
Source:
Traynor, M. (2016 September 13). Take out the earbuds. [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.benefitspro.com/2016/09/13/take-out-the-earbuds?slreturn=1474041704
Daily Grind Getting You Down? Make Yourself Happier And More Productive At Work With These Simple Tips
Employee Wellness is crucial for productivity. Katie Sola gives some tips and tricks for your daily routine to have a happier self. See the article below from Forbes.com.
Eat a lot more fruit and vegetables: Eight servings, to be exact
You know fruit and veg are healthy, but did you know they can make you happier than a major positive life event like a promotion or a major raise? Scientists at the University of Warwick, Great Britain and the University of Queensland, Australia followed more than 12,000 randomly selected people for two years. They found that people who switched from eating few fruit and vegetables to eating eight servings a day experienced a spike in well-being equivalent to getting a job after being unemployed.
Exercise before work
It’s common knowledge that exercise makes you happier and more productive, but to gain the greatest benefits, you should work out before or during the workday. Researchers at the University of Bristol, Great Britain, found that office workers are most productive on the days they exercise.
“Critically, workers performed significantly better on exercise days and across all three areas we measured, known as mental-interpersonal, output and time demands,” research associate Jo Coulson said in a statement.
Watch a funny video and have a snack during the workday
Scientists at the University of Warwick, Great Britain found that watching comedic clips and eating chocolate and fruit made workers happier, and boosted their productivity by 12 percent. It worked in a laboratory setting, so it may well work in your office too.
Keep your commute as short as possible
Long commutes sap your happiness more than you think.
“Every ten minutes of commuting results in ten per cent fewer social connections. Commuting is connected to social isolation, which causes unhappiness,” Robert Putnam told the New Yorker in 2007. He’s a Harvard political scientist and the author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.
See the full article Here.
Source:
Sola, K. (2016, July 28). Daily grind getting you down? Make yourself happier and more productive at work with these simple tips [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/levelup/2016/07/28/daily-grind-getting-you-down-make-yourself-happier-and-more-productive-at-work-with-these-simple-tips/#14c8a80b31f5
10 Things You Absolutely Need To Know About Life Insurance
Great post from Forbes.com by Tim Maurer giving some clarity on life insurance.
Life insurance is one of the pillars of personal finance, deserving of consideration by every household. I’d even go so far as to say it’s vital for most. Yet, despite its nearly universal applicability, there remains a great deal of confusion, and even skepticism, regarding life insurance.
Perhaps this is due to life insurance’s complexity, the posture of those who sell it or merely our preference for avoiding the topic of our own demise. But armed with the proper information, you can simplify the decision-making process and arrive at the right choice for you and your family.
To help, here are 10 things you absolutely need to know about life insurance:
- If anyone relies on you financially, you need life insurance. It’s virtually obligatory if you are a spouse or the parent of dependent children. But you may also require life insurance if you are someone’s ex-spouse, life partner, a child of dependent parents, the sibling of a dependent adult, an employee, an employer or a business partner. If you are stably retired or financially independent, and no one would suffer financially if you were to be no more, then you don’t need life insurance. You may, however, consider using life insurance as a strategic financial tool.
- Life insurance does not simply apply a monetary value to someone’s life. Instead, it helps compensate for the inevitable financial consequences that accompany the loss of life. Strategically, it helps those left behind cover the costs of final expenses, outstanding debts and mortgages, planned educational expenses and lost income. But most importantly, in the aftermath of an unexpected death, life insurance can lessen financial burdens at a time when surviving family members are dealing with the loss of a loved one. In addition, life insurance can provide valuable peace of mind for the policy holder. That is why life insurance is vital for the bread winner of a single-income household, but still important for a stay-at-home spouse.
- Life insurance is a contract (called a policy). A policy is a contract between a life insurance company and someone (or occasionally something, like a trust) who has a financial interest in the life and livelihood of someone else. The insurance company pools the premiums of policyholders and pays out claims—called a death benefit—in the event of a death. The difference between the premiums taken in and the claims paid out is the insurance company’s profit.
- There are four primary players, or roles, in a life insurance policy.These roles belong to the insurer, the owner, the insured and the beneficiary. The insurer is the insurance company, responsible for paying out claims in the case of a death. The owner of the policy is responsible for premium payments to the insurance company. The insured is the person upon whose life the policy is based. The beneficiary is the person, trust or other entity due to receive the life insurance claim—or death benefit—in the case of the insured’s passing. For example, I am both the owner and the insured for two life insurance policies (with two different insurers, as it happens). My wife is the beneficiary of each. We walk through the numbers together at least annually (and after major arguments, to prove that I’m still worth more alive!).
- Life insurance is a risk management tool, not an investment.While some life insurance policies have an investment feature that can offer a degree of tax privilege, insurance is rarely an optimal investment. There’s usually a better, more efficient tool for the financial task you’re trying to accomplish. If you haven’t yet filled up your emergency cash reserves, paid off all non-mortgage debt, maxed out your 401(k) or Roth IRA, contributed to an education savings plan (where appropriate) and set money aside for large purchases you expect in the next decade, then you likely need not concern yourself with types of life insurance that contain an investment component. (You’ll see why in #7.)
- There are two broad varieties of life insurance about which you should become aware—term and permanent. Term life is the simplest, the least expensive and the most widely applicable. With term life, a life insurance company bases the policy premium on the probability that the insured will die within a stated term—typically 10, 20 or 30 years. The premiums are guaranteed for the length of the term, after which the policy becomes cost-prohibitive to maintain or you decide to let it lapse. Yes, this means that you may very well pay premiums for decades and “get nothing out of it.” But that’s good news, because it means you’re winning at the game of life.
Permanent life insurance includes this same probability-of-death calculus, but also includes a savings mechanism. This mechanism, which is often referred to as “cash value,” is designed to help the policy exist into perpetuity. Whole life—the original—has an investment component much like bonds or CDs (but backed by the insurance company). Variable life offers investment options more like mutual funds. Universal life was designed as a less expensive permanent life insurance alternative with added flexibility, but increased interest rate risk for the owner. Although they tend to be more complex and expensive, there are financial dilemmas—often related to business planning and/or high-net-worth estate planning—for which permanent life insurance may be the only solution. There are a few select instances where permanent policies are engineered to maximize the tax-privileged growth of cash value. They are, however, only appropriate for a small number of people and still dependent on numerous other factors to work the way they’re intended.
- Life insurance can be extremely expensive, but it can also be surprisingly inexpensive. If you apply for a bells-and whistles permanent policy, the size of the premiums alone might cause you to need a life insurance benefit right then and there. But most people are pleasantly surprised when they see the relatively low premiums of a plain-vanilla term policy. A healthy, non-smoking, 30-something male, for example, might pay less than $500 per year for a 20-year term policy with a million dollar death benefit. That same individual might be required to pay 10—or even 20—times as much for a variable or whole life insurance policy with a matching death benefit. No, a term/perm comparison is not apples-to-apples. I would hazard to guess, however, that a recent widower cares little for bells-and-whistles but a great deal for the death benefit. Of course, a smoker will likely pay twice as much for any of the above. Someone with health problems could pay triple or more (or simply be declined for coverage).
- Determining the optimal life insurance policy for you doesn’t have to be complicated. While we could get really granular with a detailed life insurance needs analysis, it’s more important to get set up with something you can comprehend than it is to push off an important decision due to life insurance’s intimidating complexity. In the vast majority of situations, a household would be well cared for simply by buying enough life insurance to replicate all or most of the insured’s income for a term as long as the household expects to need that income.
Therefore, consider this simple but effective strategy for determining how much life insurance your household needs. Multiply a wage earner’s income by 15 and purchase a policy with an equivalent death benefit for a term that extends until the person insured would presumably retire. Why 15? Because it works. But it works because it results in a number that should re-create 75% of a wage earner’s income if the death benefit was conservatively invested to earn 5% (hopefully plus a bit more for inflation) annually. Here’s an example:
- Dave makes $100,000.
- $100,000 x 15 = $1,500,000 of death benefit
- $1,500,000 earning 5% annually produces $75,000 of income.
- Consider using a live person to help in your death planning. There are many online tools that can help give you an idea of how much money you should pay for the policy you need. But once you get to that point, I would recommend contacting a real, live insurance agent who can walk you through the application and underwriting process. The premiums at a given insurance company are identical whether you apply online, via a toll-free number or with a person. Indeed, a knowledgeable and dedicated insurance broker or agent may help you save money by choosing the best carrier for your particular situation. Underwriting, by the way, is the necessarily tedious process through which the insurance company classifies how much of a risk you are, based on your current health, past health, the health of your parents and siblings and enough other questions to make anyone blush. Answer truthfully—but succinctly.
- Know your options when canceling an existing life insurance policy so you don’t leave money, or coverage, on the table. If you have a policy that isn’t appropriate for you—or you simply no longer need it—it’s important to proceed carefully. First, if you realize that you have overpaid for a policy that doesn’t meet your needs, but you still need life insurance, don’t cancel the wrong policy until the right policy is in place. Who knows, you could learn of a health complication that is going to lead to you being declined for the new policy. Then you’d be left without any coverage. If you have an existing term policy you no longer need, you can simply cease premium payments and it will go away. If you have an unnecessary permanent policy with a cash value, however, you should analyze its present and expected future investment value, as well as any prospective tax complications, before cashing it in. You can do so by requesting an “in-force illustration” and a “cost basis report” from your agent.
I suspect we don’t love talking about life insurance because we don’t like talking about death. No shocker there. But open and honest discussions about planning for an unexpected death can be surprisingly life-giving. And even if you don’t buy that, the chances are good that purchasing life insurance is still an important part of your long-term and comprehensive financial plan.
Read the original article from Forbes.com Here.
Source:
Maurer, T. (2016, January 5). 10 things you absolutely need to know about life insurance [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/timmaurer/2016/01/05/10-things-you-absolutely-need-to-know-about-life-insurance/#2fb2453c3872
10 Resources to Help Your Employees Prepare for Retirement
Very helpful tips for retirement from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), by Irene Saccoccio.
Social Security wants to help you prepare your employees for a secure, comfortable retirement. Security is the Social Security Administration’s middle name and we want everyone to enjoy the fruits of a lifetime of labor.
We mentioned before that being prepared when you retire can open new avenues of possibilities. Our website has tools and information to help you secure today and tomorrow. When it comes to retirement, we’ve got you covered with 10 tools to help you plan for your retirement, apply for, and then manage your benefits as you go along.
1. Our Retirement Estimator provides estimates based on your actual Social Security earnings record. Plug in different numbers, retirement dates, and scenarios to help you decide the best time for you to retire.
2. Using our Retirement Planner: Plan for Your Retirement can help you find your ideal retirement age, estimate your life expectancy and the amount of your benefits when you retire. You can test future retirement ages and various earning amounts.
3. Read Retirement Planner: Getting Benefits While Working to learn the rules and regulations about work after retirement, how it affects you, and what you should consider.
4. Retirement Benefits provides you with a broad overview of our retirement program. It covers how you earn coverage, how to apply, how benefits are figured, and how to decide when to retire.
5. When to Start Receiving Retirement Benefits takes a look at some factors that can help you make an informed decision about the best time to retire.
6. Your Retirement Benefit: How It Is Figured explains the formula Social Security uses to calculate your benefit amount, describes what factors can affect it, and offers a worksheet to help you estimate your retirement benefits.
7. The Medicare section of our website provides information about the Medicare program and answers general questions on Medicare.
8. Medicare Premiums: Rules for Higher-Income Beneficiaries explains the rules about people with higher incomes. If you have higher income, find out why you will pay an additional premium amount for Medicare Part B and Medicare prescription drug coverage.
9. Your personal my Social Security account is one of the most powerful tools available to secure your retirement. And lucky for you it’s at your fingertips. With a personal my Social Security account, your employees can get their Social Security Statement that shows estimates of their future retirement, disability, and survivors benefits. They can check their earnings to verify the yearly amounts that we posted are correct. They can also get estimates of Social Security and Medicare taxes they’ve paid.
10. Our online retirement application is an easy, convenient, and secure way to trail-blaze your way to retirement. You can complete it in as little as 15 minutes and, just like that, you can start the retirement of your dreams.
With these 10 resources, your employees can stay informed about their retirement options. Information is the first step toward achievement. When you retire one journey ends while another begins. Be ready for your next adventure!
Irene Saccoccio is the National Public Affairs Specialist for the U.S. Social Security Administration.
See the original article Here.
Source:
Saccoccio, I. (2016 September 15). 10 Resources to help your employees prepare for retirement. [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://blog.shrm.org/blog/10-resources-to-help-your-employees-prepare-for-retirement
CMS moves to shore up ACA insurance markets
Great article from Modern Healthcare by Bob Herman
The CMS proposed rules Monday afternoon that would make several changes to the Affordable Care Act marketplaces and refine the law's risk adjustment, heeding calls from the health insurance industry.
The proposed rules (PDF), which normally are released in November, come after weeks of intense scrutiny and uncertainty about the viability of the new ACA insurance exchanges. Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealth Group, which have bigger footprints in the employer and Medicare Advantage markets, all have announced major retrenchments for the 2017 season, which begins Nov. 1.
One of the biggest changes involves the ACA's permanent risk-adjustment program. Lawmakers created risk adjustment to compensate plans for taking on sicker enrollees who have higher healthcare costs, thereby attempting to eliminate the incentive to cherry-pick healthier people.
Starting in 2018, risk adjustment would factor in prescription drug data in addition to all the normal conditions and illnesses that are factored into someone's risk score. Health insurers have argued their members look healthier than they actually are because the program doesn't account for the medicines people are taking. But some risk-adjustment experts believe using drug data could create perverse incentives for doctors to write unnecessary prescriptions.
The CMS said the change was worth pursuing while considering those concerns. “We sought to strike a reasonable balance between increasing predictive accuracy and reducing incentives for overprescription,” the agency said. “One way we sought to do so was by focusing on drugs for which guidelines on when they should be prescribed are clear.”
Conditions that involve drugs that would be used for the updated risk adjustment include hepatitis C, HIV/AIDS, end-stage renal disease, diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease.
Risk adjustment in 2018 also would account for “partial-year” members who enroll outside of open enrollment. Insurers have said people who enroll midyear have higher healthcare costs and therefore are riskier to cover.
The CMS' proposals would alter several areas within the 2018 exchange plans as well. For example, the agency proposed three additional sets of standardized plans, called “simple choice” plans.
Last year, the CMS proposed six standardized health plan options as a way to simplify shopping for consumers on the federally run marketplaces. For instance, each plan in each tier level has the same deductible and same annual limit on cost-sharing. However, plans are not required to offer standardized options. Insurers fought aggressively against the Obama administration's proposal, saying those types of plans would “stifle” their ability to create new benefits and products.
The new standardized options for 2018 mostly were proposed to adapt with existing state cost-sharing laws, the CMS said.
The rule also proposed that insurers must offer at least one silver-level and at least one gold-level health plan if they sell on the exchanges, which cater to individuals and small businesses. Premium and cost-sharing subsidies are tied to silver plans and pay 70% of medical costs on average. Gold plans are more comparable to employer-based health coverage, paying about 80% of costs on average.
The CMS has already made several changes to the exchanges in the past year, notably to tighten up when people can enroll outside of open enrollment. Insurers have said people are gaming the special enrollment periods—reserved for when people get married or move to a new residence, for instance—and the CMS has repeatedly asked for data to prove that gaming exists.
Comments on the 2018 exchange proposals are due Oct. 6.
See the original article Here.
Source:
Herman, B. (2016 August 29). CMS moves to shore up ACA insurance markets. [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20160829/NEWS/160829915
Automation making huge retirement plan impact
Paula Aven Gladych gives great insight on how automated retirement contributions are helping increase participation. See the full article from BenefitNews.com below.
Retirement plan participation has increased 19% in the past five years because of design features that make it simple and quick for employees to participate in their workplace retirement plans.
Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement and Trust examined the savings behaviors of 4 million defined contribution plan participants from 5,000 companies and found that features such as automatic defaults into diversified investments, target-date funds and automatic escalation have had a huge effect on employee savings rates.
The company’s Plan Health Index is a retirement plan health measure that includes a plan’s participation and savings rates and its diversification as a measure of employee retirement readiness.
Employees “have to join the plan, be saving at an adequate rate and be adequately diversified for their time horizon. If they are doing all three of those things well, they have a good chance for a good outcome, assuming they started saving early enough,” says Joe Ready, executive vice president and director of institutional retirement and trust at Wells Fargo.
To score well on the Wells Fargo Plan Health Index, employees need to participate in their workplace plan, save at 10% or higher, including the employer matching contribution, and have their retirement savings in diverse investments.
“Plan health across our book of business increased 37% from five years ago,” Ready says.
Participation increased 19%, contributions were up 7.3% from five years ago and diversification improved 26%, according to Wells Fargo research.
Generationally, millennials are reaping the biggest benefit from this industry shift toward automatic features. They have essentially grown up with these options, Ready says, and they have the highest increase in participation in the last five years. They also are the most diversified generation, taking advantage of target-date funds and other managed account options.
Millennials are also taking advantage of Roth 401(k) features at a higher rate than other generations. Wells Fargo found that 16% of millennials are taking advantage of a Roth option, compared to 12% of other participants.
“They are engaged,” Ready says. “They are thinking about their future taxes and tax diversification. That’s pretty good.”
The key drivers of plan participation are income, automatic features, tenure and age, Ready says. Wells Fargo analyzed tenure and found that once a company’s employees are hired and with the company for two years, their attrition rates tend to drop off dramatically.Ready encourages employers to design their retirement plans so that loyal employees, those who have stayed longer than two years, are eligible for the employer matching contribution. It’s a balance between helping employees achieve their retirement goals and wanting to invest in those who are invested in their company, he said.
Ready encourages employers to design their retirement plans so that loyal employees, those who have stayed longer than two years, are eligible for the employer matching contribution. It’s a balance between helping employees achieve their retirement goals and wanting to invest in those who are invested in their company, he said.
The way the matching contribution is designed can also have a major impact on how much employees save for retirement. If a company switches from contributing 50 cents on the first 3% to 25% on the first 6%, it automatically gets employees saving an additional 3% they wouldn’t save otherwise. Automatic increase is another feature that is underutilized, according to Ready.
Many companies set their automatic increase at 1% per year with an opt-out option. Ready says that whether the auto increase is 1% or 2%, the opt-out percentage is the same, so why not make the auto escalation 2% per year, bringing employees closer to that 10% savings rate sooner?
“It makes a material difference, especially at a younger age, to get to a higher savings rate quicker. It makes a big difference in outcome,” Ready says.
Two-thirds of Wells Fargo’s clients use an auto increase program, but “less than 30% of those plans implemented it on an opt-out basis,” the research found.
Having an opt-out option — meaning employees have to make the effort to opt out of the increase – takes advantage of participant inertia, Wells Fargo reported. Even with an opt-out option, 79% of plan participants stayed with the automatic increase on their retirement savings accounts.
Millennials tend to be more diversified in their retirement investments than older generations, due in large part to by the increase of automatic features in plans. Because of that, Wells Fargo found that 78% of millennials are on track to replace 80% of their pay in retirement, compared to 62% for Generation X and 50% for baby boomers.
“Some of that has to do with the fact that millennials are getting into the plan at an early age, saving early and diversifying appropriately with managed products,” Ready says.
That said, only 28.6% of millennials are contributing to their retirement account at the 10% level, compared to 35.2% for Generation X and 44.5% for the boomers.
“I’m very bullish on millennials, the way they are participating and the way they are engaging in the Roth
and leveraging diversification products in their plans,” Ready says. “If they keep increasing their savings rate, they have the power of time.”
Ready says he expects the trend toward automatic features in retirement plans to continue. He also sees a future rise in technology with a purpose. Wells Fargo has a mobile app that gives employees a one-click option to sign up for their company retirement plan. The company will send a text to all new employees with a link to the retirement plan sign-up page. It might say, “You are eligible to join our 401(k) plan.” When the participant clicks on the link, it takes her to a pre-filled screen that tells her what the default saving rate is and the default investments. If the employee is happy with the defaults, all she has to do is click the enroll button.
“We have seen a material increase in the number of people enrolling because of that,” Ready says.
See Original Post from BenefitNews.com Here.
Source:
Gladych, P.A. (2016, July 21). Automation making huge retirement plan impact [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.benefitnews.com/news/automation-making-huge-retirement-plan-impact