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What would happen if you were suddenly unable to work due to an illness or injury? Think about it: without your paycheck, how long would you be able to make your mortgage or rent payment, buy groceries or pay your utilities, car payments and credit card bills, without feeling the pinch? If you’re like most […]
What is group vs. individual health insurance? This question is one of the most commonly asked by individuals and employers researching their health insurance options. A simple answer is that small business group health insurance is a policy purchased by an employer, while individual insurance is bought by a single person or family. Each option […]
Providing employer-sponsored, group health insurance is one of the top benefits a small business can provide for employees. It’s also one of the costliest expenditures. Fringe Benefit Analysts is committed to helping small business owners navigate the health insurance benefits landscape and decipher just how much it costs for small business health insurance. First—What is […]
A good portion of Americans have health care coverage through a group insurance policy. Many receive this coverage as a benefit of their employment. However, most people are fairly unsure of what group insurance coverage actually is and how it works. A thorough understanding of this type of insurance can help people find the plans […]
Running a small business requires a lot of time and effort to ensure that you are profitable and that your employees (and yourself) are well taken care of. Health insurance is not likely at the top of your To-Do list, but it should be! Figuring out whether or not your business is eligible for group […]
Why is Health Insurance Important? It’s no secret . . . medical expenses can be exorbitant. Just take these two examples into consideration: The average hospital stay in the U.S. costs $5,220 per day. And the average cost of a non-emergency hospital visit was $2,000 in 2020. Medical insurance is critical to help individuals pay […]
Have you ever overheard the new employee in the break room, bragging about how good their health insurance was with their previous employer, and how much less expensive it was than the coverage they are currently being offered? You may think ”If it was so good, then why give it up?” There are always a […]
On December 13, 2016, President Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act) into law. The Cures Act provides a method for certain small employers to reimburse individual health coverage premiums up to a dollar limit through HRAs called “Qualified Small Employer Health Reimbursement Arrangements” (QSE HRAs). The provision went into effect on January 1, 2017. On October […]
I’m happy to report that this year’s UBA Health Plan survey achieved a milestone. For the first time, we surpassed 20,000 health plans entered—20,099 health plans to be exact, which were sponsored by 11,221 employers. What we were able to determine from all this data was that a tumultuous Presidential election likely encouraged many employers […]
A health flexible spending account (FSA) is a pre-tax account used to pay for out-of-pocket health care costs for a participant as well as a participant’s spouse and eligible dependents. Health FSAs are employer-established benefit plans and may be offered with other employer-provided benefits as part of a cafeteria plan. Self-employed individuals are not eligible […]
In previous posts, I have talked about several aspects of strategic benefits communication. Now it’s time to put those strategies into action. As we approach enrollment season, let’s look at five key steps to ensuring this year’s open enrollment is successful for you and your employees. 1. Determine your key objectives What do employees need […]
It’s no secret that one of the primary agenda items of the new Republican administration is to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and to sign into law a plan that they feel will be more effective in managing health care costs. Their initial attempt at a new plan, called the American […]
Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), members belonging to a certain number of organizations known as Health Care Sharing Ministries – sometimes called Christian Health Plans or Christian Ministries Plan – were granted an exemption from the personal tax penalty (up to 2.5% of one’s household income in 2016 and beyond) for not having a […]
The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) is a federal requirement of group health plans to provide COBRA insurance continuation coverage to participants who lose coverage due to a qualifying event, when the employer has 20 or more full time employees. Over the years, many states enacted additional requirements similar to COBRA, either for small employers, […]
Over the past few years, we have seen the cost of health care steadily increase – a trend supported by the latest data from the 2016 UBA Health Plan Survey. During the recession, employers implemented health plans with higher copays, higher deductibles, or offered multiple plans with a variety of deductibles and pushed the cost […]
In some of my previous blogs, the foundation of the Consolidated Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA) continuation coverage was reviewed. Now that the groundwork has been laid, it is time to tread into the territories (or laws) where employers can lose their footing. The area covered in the following is that of the intersection […]
Employers that are subject to the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act (SCA), Davis-Bacon Act (DBA), and Davis-Bacon Related Acts (Related Acts), and who are considered an applicable large employer (ALE) under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) must ensure that they meet the requirements of all three acts, despite the fact that the interplay […]
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) imposes a penalty on “large” employers that either do not offer “minimum essential” (basic medical) coverage, or who offer coverage that is not affordable (the employee’s cost for single coverage is greater than 9.5 percent of income) or it does not provide minimum value (the plan is […]
As we mentioned in the first edition of this mini-series on the Federal Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA), “marketplaces” or “exchanges” created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) did not make COBRA coverage obsolete. Rather, COBRA is still going strong. And while the general rule of COBRA coverage is […]
