Welcome to the Compliance Navigator, courtesy of CSNW Benefits and Benefit Advisors Network. Our Compliance team helps you navigate through the complex landscape of healthcare legislation, regulation, and reform. Whether it’s ideas from the industry or emerging trends, you can read about it here. And once in a while, we may throw in a client review or some other surprise. So keep checking in. We’re glad to have you reading along.
Staying up to date on your participants’ beneficiary designations is likely not a top priority in your day-to-day activities as a plan administrator. However, by utilizing these three best practices, you can save yourself some...
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Most private-sector group health benefits plans are covered by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which requires plan sponsors to distribute certain documents to participants. The Department of Labor (DOL) provided...
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued Guidance May 13 that clears the way for pharmacists to replace some expensive biological medical products with certain biosimilars. This change has the potential to help companies save...
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Published in the June 2019 Benefits Magazine from International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans (IFEBP) Focusing on these ten compliance traps should help health and welfare plan sponsors reduce the chance of a Department of Labor...
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Medicare entitlement (i.e. eligible & enrolled) is only a COBRA qualifying event (QE) if it causes an employee to lose group health coverage (i.e. under 20 lives, or retiree plan). So due to Medicare Secondary Payer (MSP) rules,...
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The Affordable Care Act (aka “the ACA”) has been with us for over 8 years, and there remains confusion about some of the key provisions. It hasn’t helped that there have been repeated legislative efforts to repeal the...
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On March 28, 2019, a federal judge in the District of Columbia ruled that the 2018 U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) final rules on association health plans (AHPs) are unlawful. The matter has been remanded back to the DOL with...
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It’s the time of year where open enrollment is well behind us and probably isn’t top of mind until we have to start preparing again for next year. This is great time to reflect and ask ourselves: How many employees truly...
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Code §§105 and 125 require the substantiation (e.g., a receipt or bill) of all medical expenses paid or reimbursed from a health flexible spending account (FSA). Generally, substantiation occurs prior to funds being released,...
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I’ve been meaning to ask if employees are able to add common law spouses or domestic partners to health insurance? This question comes up frequently. Many believe common law marriage is the same thing as a domestic partnership,...
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