Employers Want Lawmakers to Curb Rising Pharma Costs
Has the cost of pharmaceuticals caused an increase in your health care costs? Find out how other employers are trying to combat rising costs in the great article from Employee Benefits News by Nick Otto.
A majority of employers say they were relieved to see the GOP’s repeal and replace plan fizzle out last month, and instead have their own ideas on how to best reform healthcare and how to rein in costs.
In a poll conducted by Mercer days following the crumbling of the American Health Care Act, more than half who invest in employer-sponsored healthcare said they were happy to see the GOP plan fail.
Nearly a quarter (24%) of employers told the consulting firm they “very relieved” of the legislation’s failure, while 32% said they were “relieved.”
Meanwhile, 16% said they were disappointed the legislation didn’t pass, 5% were “very disappointed” it didn’t pass, and the remainder of employers had no opinion. A planned vote on the ACHA was scrapped in late March at President Donald Trump’s request after a number of Republicans said they opposed the bill.
With more than 61% of covered Americans getting health coverage through employer plans, Mercer says businesses should help play a key role in recognizing and addressing the underlying cost concerns plaguing the healthcare market.
“Cost-shifting does not address the underlying causes of healthcare cost growth, and increasing burdens on employers will simply make it harder for them to provide affordable coverage to their employees,” Mercer says.
So what do employers say are the top issues lawmakers should address?
Topping the employer wish list, according to the Mercer poll, is help with controlling the climbing cost of pharmaceuticals with a score of 4.4/5 (employers ranked policymaker priorities 1-5, 5 being “top priority).
The following improvements also made the list of employer desires: improving price transparency (4.1), stabilizing the individual markets (4), maintaining Medicaid funding (4) and investing more in population health and education (3.7).
While neither the ACA nor the AHCA had any significant impact to how employers offer healthcare, there are aspects of both legislations that would still influence some employer plans.
Maintaining Medicaid funding and having a stabilized individual market will lower hikes to private payers by allowing people not in employer-sponsored plans have access to affordable coverage and avoid a rise in the number of uninsured.
See the original article Here.
Source:
Otto N. (2017 April 9). Employers want lawmakers to curb rising pharma costs [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.benefitnews.com/news/employers-want-lawmakers-to-curb-rising-pharma-costs?brief=00000152-14a7-d1cc-a5fa-7cffccf00000
Understanding the Evolution of Health Insurance in a Post-ACA World
With the fall of the AHCA, are you wondering where you are left standing with healthcare? Check out this great article from Benefits Pro on what the fall of the AHCA means for employers and how to proceed with healthcare from here by Eric Helman.
While much has been written about specific aspects of the ACA and how repeal, replace and repair will affect certain populations, the impact on employer-sponsored benefits is more convoluted.
In the world of employee benefits, to properly understand the post ACA world, we must reflect on the confluence of how five separate constituents react to the new health insurance landscape.
The issues and priorities of these five groups: government, carriers, employers, employees, and brokers/consultants, and how they relate to each other will dictate the evolution of health insurance in the post-ACA world.
These insights will illuminate what to expect in a post-ACA climate as the health insurance landscape continues to evolve under President Trump.
Government compliance issues ease
While we all may be a bit weary from the focus on Washington, the fact remains the federal government continues to be the single biggest catalyst for changes in the health insurance and benefits landscape.
For benefits professionals, it is important to recognize that for all the politicization around ACA, there is very little focus on the employer-provided benefits space, especially outside of the realm of small employers. The priority for government involvement in repeal-replace-repair is the individual market and Medicaid expansion.
Having said this, if the Republicans choose to use reconciliation to repeal the ACA with a simple majority, many aspects of the employer-provided system will be affected. Unfortunately, this will perpetuate the preoccupation with compliance in the employer space, continuing the trend of non-value add expenditure of resources that has plagued the industry for the last five years.
Carrier mandates relax
Perhaps surprisingly, the second area of significant change in the post-ACA era will be in the domain of the carriers. Against the backdrop of the Department of Justice opinions on the two proposed mega-mergers, we expect the greatest impact of repeal-replace-repair will manifest itself in the proliferation of new products which were “non-compliant” under the ACA.
Whether correct or not, one of the indictments of the ACA is increased mandates do more to destroy markets in terms of access and affordability than they do to advance these objectives.
Look for the relaxation of these mandates and the commensurate acceleration of new product development which will inevitably follow. Combined with the return of premium reimbursement plans in the small market, we expect the further commoditization of major medical insurance as low risk consumers choose less coverage for less premium.
Employers reallocate benefits compensation
Second only to the carriers, the employers have been the biggest victims of the ACA era. While many have applauded the decline in the rate of health care inflation, the reality is that benefits costs continue to grow more than inflation, placing an ever-increasing burden on total compensation planning.
Add to this the increased cost of compliance in an environment where employers are trying to reduce administrative costs in the face of a slow growth economy and you can understand the “ACA fatigue” many employers report.
Repeal-replace-repair, while it will bring uncertainty in the near term, is likely to lower the burden on employers and allow more strategic thinking about how they allocate compensation to benefits.
The increasing age diversity of their employees will force them to consider altering this allocation in favor of financial wellness (retirement and student debt) perhaps at the expense of traditional health benefits. The war for new talent precipitated by near full employment in skilled professions will only exacerbate this tension.
Employees wise up on benefit choices
For employees, the impact of the politicization of health care will continue to cloud their perception of their role in choosing and consuming the benefit programs offered by their employers.
While much has been written about the promise of “consumerism” to change the hyper-inflationary nature of fee-for-service health care, it is apparent that the deadly combination of employee illiteracy and entitlement about employer-provided health insurance is a greater impediment to real reform in the way health care is consumed in this country.
With the potential deregulation on mandated benefits and the increasing availability of retail health care alternatives, it will be incumbent on all the constituents to accelerate the employees’ education and appreciation for employee benefit choices customized to their informed perception of need and risk mitigation.
Brokers/consultants rise to the challenges
And now, the elephant in the room, the impact on brokers and consultants. One of my early mentors said, “There is profit in confusion.” For the skilled practitioners, I think they would agree that the net effect of the ACA was increased opportunity. It is important to note however, that this opportunity required focus on new disciplines.
No longer were the skills of customer relationship management, procurement management and vendor management sufficient to satisfy the needs of their clients. The best players were forced to develop expertise in compliance, regulatory impact, benefits technology and internal human resources processes that their predecessors could ignore. This, the low cost of money and the aging workforce of benefit producers has contributed to the continued wave of firm consolidation which changes the nature of competition.
Additionally, the widely publicized fall of market disruptors will have a chilling effect on innovation for the near term. In the post-ACA era, benefits professionals will be challenged to balance revenue, client retention and cost-of-service pressures in an environment where the future is uncertain.
The post-ACA era promises to be as exciting as the last five years. To paraphrase Richard Epstein on a separate topic, the real dilemma is that the people working on the problem lack the technical expertise and the political agnostic orientation necessary for real change.
In the meantime, successful participants in this marketplace will be forced to be both diplomats and opportunists, acutely aware of the issues and priorities facing all of the important constituents and balancing these to the most optimum outcome. I, personally, am comforted that we have some of the most creative people I know working on this challenge.
See the original article Here.
Source:
Helman E. (2017 April 7). Understanding the evolution of health insurance in a post-ACA world [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.benefitspro.com/2017/04/07/understanding-the-evolution-of-health-insurance-in?t=core-group&page_all=1
Are Healthcare Cost-Shifting Efforts at a Tipping Point?
Are you having trouble controlling your healthcare cost? Take a look at this interesting article from Employee Benefits Advisor on how rising healthcare costs are affecting employers by Bruce Shutan.
With the fate of healthcare reform in limbo, new research suggests employers are moving forward with a host of incremental changes to their health and wellness plans in hopes of curtailing costs on their own.
Kim Buckey, VP of client services at DirectPath, an employee engagement and healthcare compliance technology company, has noticed a slowdown in adoption of high-deductible health plans and cost-shifting strategies that aren’t quite living up to expectations. DirectPath’s 2017 Medical Plan Trends and Observations Report, based on an analysis of about 975 employee benefit health plans, found employers applying creative methods for cost control.
Buckey noted greater use of health savings accounts, wellness incentives, price transparency tools and alternative care options.
Slightly more than half of the employers studied by DirectPath offer a price transparency tool, while another 18% plan to do so in the next three years. Price-comparison services were found to save employees and employers alike an average of $173 and $409, respectively, per procedure.
In an effort to reduce costs and the administrative burden of tracking coverage for dependents, surcharges on spouses who can elect coverage elsewhere soared more than 40% within the past year to $152 per month.
The number of plans that offer wellness incentives rose to 58% from 50% between 2016 and 2017. Rewards included paycheck contributions, plan premium discounts, contributions to HSAs and health reimbursement arrangements and reduced co-pays for office visits. HSAs were far more popular than employee-funded HRAs (67% vs. 15% of employers examined), while employer contributions to HSAs increased nearly 10%.
Barriers to care and cost containment
A separate survey conducted by CEB, a technology company that monitors corporate performance, noted that although as many as one-third of organizations offer telemedicine, more than 55% of employees aren’t even aware of their availability and nearly 60% believe they’re difficult to access.
DirectPath and CEB both found that the average cost of specialty drugs increased by more than 30%. This reflects research conducted by the National Business Group on Health. Nearly one-third of NBGH members said the category was their highest driver of healthcare costs last year.
The pursuit of a panacea for rising group health costs has been meandering. When Buckey’s career began, she recalls how indemnity plans gave way to HMOs and managed care, then HDHPs, consumer-directed plans and private exchanges. “There is no one silver bullet that’s going to solve this problem,” she explains, “and I think employers and their advisers are starting to understand that it’s got to be a combination of things.”
More employers are now realizing that cost-shifting isn’t a viable long-term solution and that “whatever changes are put in place will require a well thought-out, year-round and robust communication plan,” she says.
There’s also a serious need to improve healthcare literacy, with Buckey noting that many employees still struggle to understand basic concepts such as co-pays, deductibles and HSAs. Consequently, she says it’s no wonder why they often “just shut down and do whatever their doctor tells them.
“So I think anything that advisers and brokers can do to support their employers in explaining these plans, or whatever changes they choose to implement,” she continues, will help raise understanding and eventually have a positive influence on behavior change. This, in turn, will help lower employee healthcare costs.”
See the original article Here.
Source:
Shutan B. (2017 April 5). Are healthcare cost-shifting efforts at a tipping point? [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.employeebenefitadviser.com/news/are-healthcare-cost-shifting-efforts-at-a-tipping-point
5 Simple Steps Clients Can Take to Boost Workers' Financial Wellness
Are you trying to help your employees increase their financial well-being? Check out these 5 great tips from Employee Benefits Adviser on how to help increase your employees' investment into their financial wellness by Joe Desilva.
Now more than ever, employers offer a wide array of benefits to build engagement and culture within their walls. Healthy snack options adorning the kitchen? Check. Fitness stipends? Check. Competitive work-from-home policies? Check. These are all nice-to-have extras, but employees are increasingly concerned about a more fundamental concern: retirement planning. And it’s here where employers are not providing enough enticing options as they are with the other, flashier perks.
One of the biggest issues employees face as they plan for retirement is economic uncertainty. Only 21% of workers are very confident that they will have enough money for a comfortable retirement, according to the 2016 Employee Benefit Research Institute Retirement Confidence Survey. This should matter to employers because financial uncertainty can have a negative effect on work performance, according to a study by Lockton Retirement Services. The study found that one in five workers reported feeling extremely stressed, mostly because of their job or finances, and those reporting high stress were twice as likely to report poor health overall, leading to more sick days and decreased productivity.
Boosting financial wellness programs not only can help employees’ finances in the long term, it can possibly help employees manage stress and increase productivity in the short term. Employers seem to understand this. In fact, 92% of employer-respondents in a study commissioned by ADP titled Winning with Wellness confirmed interest in providing their workforce with information about retirement planning basics, and 84% said the same of retirement income planning.
Yet, even though many employers appreciate the value of these programs, 32% are not considering implementation. The appetite exists for retirement planning, but the prospects of starting a program appear to be daunting. The truth is, it can be easier than you think.
Here are five simple steps an employer can take to start helping employees find tools and information to help them better manage their finances and grow more confident in their financial futures.
- Teach employees critical planning skills. Experts suggest retirees will need 75%-90% of their working income to live comfortably in retirement. To help employees determine the optimal amount to meet their needs, consider providing them with tools that look at factors such as current annual pre-tax income, estimated Social Security benefit amount, current age and the age they would like to retire, and any retirement savings and project possible retirement savings outcomes. Helping them estimate savings needs and retirement investing now can pay off in the future.
- Offer access to automatic enrollment and auto-escalation features. No matter how well employees do with other investments, the 401(k)’s advantages of tax-deferred growth and a company match is likely unbeatable. By automatically enrolling employees in retirement plans with savings increases, you may be able to position your employees for a more confident financial future.
- Provide resources so employees can seek investment advice from a professional. Employees may want to seek advice on their investments so they will not bear the stress of retirement on their own. There are a lot of options available to employees, but they may not be familiar enough with those options to determine whether or not they’d benefit. Providing access to professional investment advice with respect to retirement accounts may help employees feel confident in their retirement decisions.
- Deliver tools and personalized materials that integrate with real data. Working with a service provider that integrates payroll and recordkeeping data can give a retirement plan the ability to deliver targeted personalized information that employees can use for planning purposes. By delivering relevant information, employees can get engaged and have a better sense of the progress of their retirement planning.
- Make self-learning tools available for honing financial skills anytime, anywhere. A financial wellness program can help employees face their financial decisions with confidence. Most programs offer a library of tools and resources that gives employees access to information about planning, saving, and providing for their home, family and retirement. With financial education, employees may make better financial choices and set realistic goals.
At a time when employee retention is crucial, it’s important to create a support system for employees as they plan their financial futures. With so many workers concerned about retirement security, employers have a clear opportunity to step in and help. Whether it’s enabling employees to save more for retirement or learn about budgeting, financial planning can potentially serve as another popular perk among that list of nice-to-haves.
See the original article Here.
Source:
Desilva J. (2017 March 16). 5 simple steps clients can take to boost workers' financial wellness[Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.employeebenefitadviser.com/opinion/5-simple-steps-clients-can-take-to-boost-workers-financial-wellness
How Employers Should Proceed After the AHCA’s Collapse
Take a look at the great article from Employee Benefits Advisor on what employers need to know about healthcare with the collapse of the AHCA by Alden J. Bianchi and Edward A. Lenz.
The stunning failure of the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the American Health Care Act has political and policy implications that cannot be forecasted. Nor is it clear whether or when the Trump administration and Congress will make another effort to repeal and replace, or whether Republicans will seek Democratic support in an effort to “repair,” the Affordable Care Act. Similarly, we were unable to predict whether and to what extent the AHCA’s provisions can be achieved through executive rulemaking or policy guidance.
Here are some ways the AHCA’s failure could impact employers in the near term.
Immediate impact on employers
Employers were not a major focus of the architects of the ACA, nor were they a major focus of those who crafted the AHCA. This is not surprising. These laws address healthcare systems and structures, especially healthcare financing. Rightly or wrongly, employers have not been viewed by policymakers as major stakeholders on those issues.
In a blog post published at the end of 2014, we made the following observations:
The ACA sits atop a major tectonic plate of the U.S. economy, nearly 18% of which is healthcare-related. Healthcare providers, commercial insurance carriers, and the vast Medicare/Medicaid complex are the law’s primary stakeholders. They, and their local communities, have much to lose or gain depending on how healthcare financing is regulated. The ACA is the way it is largely because of them. Far more than any other circumstance, including which political party controls which branch of government, it is the interests of the ACA’s major stakeholders that determine the law’s future. And there is no indication whatsoever that, from the perspective of these entities, the calculus that drove the ACA’s enactment has changed. U.S. employers, even the largest employers among them, are bit players in this drama. They have little leverage, so they are relegated to complying and grumbling (not necessarily in that order).
With the AHCA’s collapse, the ACA remains the law of the land for the foreseeable future. The AHCA would have zeroed out the penalties on “applicable large” employers that fail to make qualified offers of health coverage, but the bill’s failure leaves the ACA’s “play or pay” rules in full force and effect. The ACA’s reporting rules, which the AHCA would not have changed, also remain in effect. This means, among other things, that many employers, especially those with large numbers of part-time, seasonal, and temporary workers that face unique compliance challenges, will continue to be in the position of “complying and grumbling.”
This does not mean that nothing has changed. The leadership of the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury has changed, and these agencies are now likely to be more employer-friendly. Thus, even though the ACA is still the law, the regulatory tone and tenor may well be different. For example, although the current complex employer reporting rules will remain in effect, the Treasury and IRS might find administrative ways to simplify them. Similarly, any regulations issued under the ACA’s non-discrimination provisions applicable to insured health plans (assuming they are issued at all) likely will be more favorable to employers than those issued under the previous administration.
There are also unanticipated consequences of the AHCA’s failure that employers might applaud. We can think of at least two.
1. Stemming the anticipated tide of new state “play or pay” laws
The continuation of the ACA’s employer mandate likely will put on hold consideration by state and local governments of their own “play or pay” laws.
In anticipation of the repeal of the ACA’s employer mandate, the Governor of Massachusetts recently introduced a budget proposal that would reinstate mandated employer contributions to help cover the costs of increased enrollment in the Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as MassHealth. Under the proposal, employers with 11 or more full-time equivalent employees would have to offer full-time employees a minimum of $4,950 toward the cost of an employer group health plan, or make an annual contribution in lieu of coverage of $2,000 per full-time equivalent employee. While the Governor’s proposal is not explicitly conditioned on repeal of the ACA’s employer mandate, the ACA’s survival may prompt a reconsideration of that approach.
California lawmakers were also considering ACA replacement proposals, including a single-payer bill introduced last month by Democratic state senators Ricardo Lara and Toni Atkins. Had the ACA’s employer mandate been repealed, those proposals were likely just the tip of an iceberg. When the ACA was enacted in 2010, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and San Francisco were the only jurisdictions with their own healthcare mandates on the books. But in the prior two-year period, before President Obama was elected and made healthcare reform his top domestic priority, more than two dozen states had introduced various “fair share” health care reform bills aimed at employers.
Most of the state and local “play or pay” proposals would have required employers to pay a specified percentage of their payroll, or a specified dollar amount, for health care coverage. Some required employers to pay employees a supplemental hourly “health care” wage in addition to their regular wages or provide health benefits of at least equal value. California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin considered single-payer proposals.
To be sure, any state or local “play or pay” mandates would be subject to challenge based on Federal preemption under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). While some previous “play or pay” laws were invalidated under ERISA (e.g., Maryland), others (i.e., San Francisco) were not. In sum, given the failure of the AHCA, there would appear to be no rationale, at least for now, for any new state or local “play or pay” laws to go forward.
2. Avoiding upward pressure on employer premiums as a result of Medicaid reforms
The AHCA proposed to reform Medicaid by giving greater power to the states to administer the Medicaid program. Under an approach that caps Medicaid spending, the law would have provided for “per capita allotments” and “block grants.” Under either approach, the Congressional Budget Office, in its scoring of the AHCA, predicted that far fewer individuals would be eligible for Medicaid.
According to the CBO: CBO and JCT estimate that enacting the legislation would reduce federal deficits by $337 billion over the 2017 to 2026 periods. That total consists of $323 billion in on-budget savings and $13 billion in off-budget savings. Outlays would be reduced by $1.2 trillion over the period, and revenues would be reduced by $0.9 trillion. The largest savings would come from reductions in outlays for Medicaid and from the elimination of the ACA’s subsidies for non-group health insurance.
While employers rarely pay attention to Medicaid, the AHCA gave them a reason to do so. Fewer Medicaid-eligible individuals would mean more uncompensated care — a significant portion of the costs of which would likely be passed on to employers in the form of higher premiums. As long as the ACA’s expanded Medicaid coverage provisions remain in place, premium pressure on employers will to that extent be avoided.
Long-term impact on employers
As we conceded at the beginning, it’s not clear how the Republican Congress and the Administration will react to the AHCA’s failure. If the elected representatives of both political parties are inclined to try to make the current system work, however, we can think of no better place that the prescriptions contained in a report by the American Academy of Actuaries, entitled “An Evaluation of the Individual Health Insurance Market and Implications of Potential Changes.”
The actuaries’ report does not address, much less resolve, the major policy differences between the ACA and the AHCA over the role of government — in particular, the extent to which taxpayers should be called on to fund the health care costs of low-and moderate-income individuals, and whether U.S. citizens should be required to maintain health coverage or pay a penalty. And even if lawmakers can reach consensus on those contentious issues, they still would have to agree on the proper implementing mechanisms.
But whatever the outcome, employers are unlikely to play a major role.
See the original article Here.
Source:
Bianchi A. & Lenz E. (2017 April 6). How employers should proceed after the AHCA's collapse [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.employeebenefitadviser.com/opinion/how-employers-should-proceed-after-the-ahcas-collapse
Expert: The staggering new retirement savings number millennials have to hit
Have your millennial workers started saving for retirement? If not take a look at this great article from HR Morning about the amount of money millennials need to save for retirement by Christian Schappel.
Want to jolt your younger workers into contributing more to your company-sponsored retirement plans? Just show them this figure.
After looking at several studies, estimates and financial experts’ opinions, Robert Powell, USA Today’s retirement planning expert and editor of Retirement Weekly, is predicting that millennials will need upwards of $2.5 million saved to comfortably retire.
That estimate is for the youngest millennials — those born in the late 1990s.
The news isn’t quite as bleak for those born in the 1980s. Their retirement savings goal, according to Powell: $1.8M.
Why so much?
Here are the numbers behind the estimates.
Powell’s assuming millennials will need to live on between $30K and $40K annually in retirement (in today’s dollars).
Plus, a modest rate of inflation (2%) will make $1M of today’s dollars worth about $530K in 32 years, and roughly just $386K in 48 years.
You can see Powell’s breakdown in more detail here.
The bottom line is this: For today’s millennials to hit that $2.5M number in 48 years, Powell said they’d need to save about $1,000 per month — and that’s assuming there’s 5% growth on their investments annually. That’s a staggering amount that, most likely, your employees aren’t coming close to hitting.
Still, every little bit helps. And if these figures can encourage employees to increase their savings even a little, they’ve done their job.
See the original article Here.
Source:
Schappel C. (2017 February 23). Expert: the staggering new retirement savings number millennials have to hit [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.hrmorning.com/expert-the-staggering-new-retirement-savings-number-millennials-have-to-hit/
Debt should be priority in financial wellness programs
Do you know what your employees prioritize in their financial wellness program? Take a look at this article from Employee Benefits News about how more employees are placing debt as their number one priority in their financial wellness plans by Kathryn Mayer.
As research continues to pile up about employees’ dire financial state, many employers are left wondering how best to help their workers become financially stable.
Step one? Help them get rid of debt.
“Debt is the biggest [financial well-being] issue right now,” Meghan Murphy, director of thought leadership at Fidelity Investments, said Tuesday during the NAPA 401k Summit in Las Vegas. “Debt is becoming a way of life for all generations.”
There’s a “huge focus” for employers to take action right now in helping employees pay down student loans, Murphy said. It’s an issue plaguing everyone from millennials entering the workforce with massive amounts of debt to baby boomers who have their own student loans and are looking to finance their children’s education as well.
“Not only is [student loan repayment] great for retention, but it makes employees feel great,” she said.
Though student loan debt is garnering more attention in the workforce, it should not be the only area of focus, she said. Credit card debt, 401(k) loans and mortgage loans should also be priorities. In particular, many employers are beginning to put plans in place for ways to manage 401(k) loans by limiting the number of loans allowed or putting a waiting period in place for employees to get the money. “People are very attached to the concept that they can have the money if needed, but we have to find a way to stop that.
“A lot of education is needed in the workplace with debt — student loan debt, credit card debt … there’s not a single focus. If [employees] can pay down debt in general, [they] can save more. Even if employees can save a little bit, with whatever tools we can build and whatever tools and engagement employers offer, that would go a long way.”
Emergency savings also should be a big area of focus for financial wellness,” Murphy said. According to Fidelity’s research, employees do not think long term when it comes to financial goals; 27% of employees only think about the next few months when it comes to money. People who lack emergency savings are twice as likely to say they do not feel good about their finances, Murphy added.
“Most people don’t have an emergency savings account, and most people who do are afraid to spend it,” she said.
What the industry should do — and is starting to do — is to come up with ways to automate emergency savings, similar to automating retirement accounts savings.
Overall, employees’ financial state is pretty dire, Murphy said, citing Fidelity Investment research. In addition to meager savings, financial stress is wreaking havoc in the workplace. More than half of millennials say they’re less committed to work when experiencing money problems, and 28% say they are distracted at work because of it. Another 24% of workers say they avoid medical treatment due to financial problems.
“It’s all very cyclical,” Murphy said. “If you have a health issue, it can impact your money; it can impact your job. If you have a money issue, it can impact your health; it can impact your job. And it all impacts our happiness.”
The overall takeaway is financial wellness is needed in a big way.
“Employees really, really want help to make financial decisions and employers are starting to step up to take this role,” she said.
See the original article Here.
Source:
Mayer K. (2017 March 21). Debt should be priority in financial wellness programs [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.benefitnews.com/news/debt-should-be-priority-in-financial-wellness-programs?tag=00000151-16d0-def7-a1db-97f03c840000
7 wellness benefits to maintain employees' zen
Check out the top trends that employees are looking for in an employer wellness programs by Page Elliott.
With open enrollment in the rearview mirror, many benefits professionals have been able to see which new wellness benefits have been a hit and which have been a miss. Increasingly, employees expect the benefits on offer to go beyond physical health and exercise and extend into a broader concept of wellness.
Meeting this appetite can benefit employers significantly -- research has shown happier employees are considerably more productive.
The industry has answered the call in recent years and employers and brokers are bringing more and more benefits to the table that offer employees tools to better navigate their lives domestically, at work and in general.
Here are the top seven benefits to consider for upcoming enrollment periods that help look after employees personal well-being beyond the purely physical.
Legal protection
There are a multitude of reasons why employees often require costly legal representation: divorce, financial woes, neighborly disputes, property transactions, estate planning, etc. For most employees the costs and time required to attend to these issues are financially and emotionally draining.
The added stress created can cause a substantial loss in productivity in the workplace. As such, legal protection benefits are increasingly seen as an important step to keep a company’s workforce well and thriving.
According to a 2016 survey by Willis Towers Watson, 59 percent of employers now offer legal plans as a voluntary benefit.
Financial coaching
According to a study by Northwestern Mutual, some 58 percent of Americans believe their financial planning needs improvement and money remains the leading cause of stress in America today.
Offering financial coaching can be a bedrock voluntary benefit for employers given that it is central to protecting employees from falling into the kind of dire straits where other benefits like legal protection need to be used.
Financial coaching can help employees with everything from building a monthly budget that gets them back in the black, to planning their college fund or retirement saving more carefully. Financial coaching as an employee benefit can help employees thrive instead of just survive.
Identity theft resolution and monitoring
Identity theft is fast becoming the third certainty in life -- according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, nearly 18 million people fell victim to identity theft in 2014 (that’s seven percent of U.S. adults in just one year).
Identity theft leads to financial and healthcare fraud that can be a crippling mess for victims to unravel and take many years (and many work hours!). The emotional effects of identity theft are well documented and easy to understand: anger, frustration and feelings of violation and vulnerability and the corresponding impact on wellness are clear.
Identity theft remediation and monitoring services can provide employees with critical resources to handle the frustrating complexities of rectifying fraud conducted using their own identities.
Health advocacy benefits
While a healthy chunk of all our paychecks goes towards paying for our health care insurance and services -- a fiendishly complex and constantly evolving ecosystem -- many Americans don’t understand the most basic terms.
Health advocacy has been a growing voluntary benefit over the last few years because it can help employees navigate a complex and exhausting system, offering both administrative and even clinical support. Health advocacy can reduce employee anxiety, improve overall wellness through better heath decisions and also help consumers get a better financial deal from their health care choices.
Meditation services
Research indicates that meditation has substantial benefits in terms of encouraging better attention, memory and emotional intelligence (and who couldn’t use some more of each on a daily basis?)
Mindfulness has been a top topic for HR pros for a long time, and many have made big strides in incorporating this concept into corporate culture. This has included encouraging employees to try extra-curricular relaxation techniques like yoga and meditation.
Some companies have gone as far as offering apps like Headspace to employees as a voluntary benefit at low or no cost.
Relationship counseling
The prevailing wisdom relating to employees’ personal problems has always been stay well out of it. However, more and more companies are seeing the upside of providing assistance to employees without getting directly involved in their personal lives.
One increasingly popular method for helping people manage the conflicts that exist in their lives outside of the office is to offer relationship counseling. While this remains a rarity on most voluntary benefits portals, expect to see this popping up more and more in subsequent open enrollment periods.
Child care assistance
According to a survey by Care.com, over 70 percent of employees say the cost of childcare impacts their career decisions. Not wildly surprising given that nearly a third of families pay in excess of $20,000 per annum for child care -- a figure that represents a shockingly high portion of the average U.S. household income of around $52,000.
Related: Are you ready for the millennial baby boom?
Offering dependent care deduction has been a popular benefit for a number of years and more and more parents are taking this up as part of their flex spending arrangements. Assistance can go beyond the tax break though and a growing number of companies are offering services that can make managing child care vastly easier, including child care resource and referral services that can help with back-up arrangements when daycare centers are closed.
See the original article Here.
Source:
Elliott P. (2017 March 21). 7 wellness benefits to maintain employees' zen[Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.benefitspro.com/2017/03/21/7-wellness-benefits-to-maintain-employees-zen?kw=7+wellness+benefits+to+maintain+employees%27+zen&et=editorial&bu=BenefitsPRO&cn=20170326&src=EMC-Email_editorial&pt=Benefits+Weekend+PRO&page_all=1
Digital approach to millennials can boost retirement savings participation
Do you need help boosting involvement in your retirement program? Take a look at this great article from Benefits Pro about how digital media can be the perfect vehicle for increase enrollment in your retirement program by Marlene Satter.
Retirement plan providers need a new approach—literally—when it comes to engaging millennials: going digital.
According to a blog post from Corporate Insight, millennials use, or seek to use, technology and mobile platforms to manage as many aspects of their lives as possible. But when it comes to retirement plans, many can’t.
While millennials are not only much more likely to value mobile access to their 401(k)s than their parents are, plan providers haven’t been as enthusiastic.
A Corporate Insight survey found that 57 percent of millennials consider the ability to manage their retirement plan account via a mobile app “very important” or “extremely important,” versus just 26 percent of baby boomers, but only 10 of the 19 leading retirement plan providers Corporate Insight tracks offer any kind of transaction capabilities via their iPhone apps.q
And that, considering millennials’ preferences, is a failure.
Although it’s considerably better than it was only four years ago, when only two out of 17 firms provided such service, the post says, “the industry has yet to reach the standard set by other financial industry verticals, like banking and brokerage, where mobile transaction functionality is the new normal.”
It’s true that many retirement plan providers have recently introduced mobile apps, but those apps have only limited capabilities compared with the functionalities millennials are looking for.
Then there’s the little matter of advice and education. Thanks to the Great Recession, millennials have a low risk tolerance and tend to stick to very conservative investments.
In addition, they “highly value advice and are not receiving enough of it,” the post says. With millennials the most likely of all generations to seek some degree of professional advice, at 89 percent compared with 78 percent of boomers, only 58 percent say they have been offered this assistance.
Of course, even among those offered advice, just 59 percent have actually taken advantage of it—possibly because they perceive it as expensive and don’t realize that the plan sponsor may be footing the bill instead of the employee.
Better communicating the menu of options available to employees could correct misperceptions, as well as alert employees unaware of the option to its availability.
Millennials are also more open to managed accounts, and those who have them are likely to say they’re satisfied or very satisfied with them.
Fintech firms offering low-cost robo options could boost the participation of young people in their retirement accounts, and as a means of customization they could be key to improving the results of defined contribution retirement accounts in helping employees prepare for retirement.
See the original article Here.
Source:
Satter M. (2017 March 24). Digital approach to millennials can boost retirement savings participation [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.benefitspro.com/2017/03/24/digital-approach-to-millennials-can-boost-retireme?ref=hp-news
ACA repeal bill nixed: What’s next for healthcare reform, employers?
With the fall of the AHCA find out what is next for employers in terms of healthcare from the great article at HR Morning by Christian Schappel.
The Republican’s best attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to date has been axed. Where does that leave employers, and what can they expect next?
For starters, it leaves employers with the ACA and everything that comes with it … the employer mandate … the reporting requirements … the whole enchilada.
In other words, any organizations that relaxed their ACA compliance efforts — believing the Republican’s American Health Care Act would repeal and replace Obamacare — could be exposing themselves to non-compliance penalties.
The more complicated question is: What happens next?
A piecemeal approach?
With this appearing to be the GOP’s best shot at repealing and replacing Obamacare (or at least parts of it) in one stroke, and the party failing to push its legislation through Congress, President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) appear resigned to the fact that the ACA will remain in place indefinitely.
“We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future,” Ryan said after announcing the GOP bill would not be voted on in the House.
Trump has even indicated that after this loss for the GOP, he wants the party to focus on other issues, like tax reform.
But that doesn’t mean health reform will be on the back burner.
It now appears that Republicans’ best course of action to implement reform changes would be to attempt to “fix” parts of the ACA that are deemed to not be working. And it could do that by including small healthcare provisions in other pieces of legislation, like future tax reform bills.
Trump and his fellow Republicans could also seek to offer concessions to Democrats in future legislation as a means to get members of the left to agree to include certain provisions of the American Health Care Act in future bills.
Example, Republicans are still expected to push hard for a rollback of the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid, and members of the GOP could seek to include rollback provisions in future tax reform legislation in exchange for proposing a tax reform plan Democrats would find more palatable.
How did we get here?
So why did the American Health Care Act fail, despite Republicans controlling the House, Senate and White House?
The answer starts with the fact that the GOP didn’t have the 60 seats in the Senate to avoid a filibuster by the Democrats. In other words, despite being the majority party, it didn’t have enough votes to pass a broad ACA repeal bill outright.
As a result, Senate Republicans had to use a process known as reconciliation to attempt to reshape the ACA. Reconciliation is a process that allows for the passage of budget bills with 51 votes instead of 60. So the GOP could vote on budgetary pieces of the health law, without giving the Democrats a chance to filibuster.
The problem for Republicans was reconciliation severely limited the extent to which they could reshape the law — and it’s a big reason the why American Health Care Act looked, at least to some, like “Obamacare Lite.”
Ultimately, what caused Trump and Ryan to decide to pull the bill before the House had a chance to vote on it was that so many House Republicans voiced displeasure with the bill and said they wouldn’t vote for it.
Specifically, here are some of what conservatives didn’t like about the American Health Care Act:
- it largely left a lot of the ACA’s “entitlements” intact — like government aid for purchasing insurance
- it didn’t do enough to curtail the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid
- too many of the ACA’s insurance coverage mandates would remain in place
- the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would result in some 24 million Americans losing insurance within the next decade, and
- it didn’t do enough to drive down the cost of insurance coverage in general.
See the original article Here.
Source:
Schappel C. (2017 March 29). ACA repeal bill nixed: what's next for healthcare reform, employers? [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.hrmorning.com/aca-repeal-bill-nixed-whats-next-for-healthcare-reform/