Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
A plan participant’s disregard of health plan requests to verify dependent eligibility was a proper basis of a plan’s action to remove his dependents from coverage and garnish wages to recover about $23,000 in benefits overpayments, a federal court ruled in Muhammad v. Ford Motor Co., 2012 WL 95298 (E.D. Mich., Jan. 12, 2012). The […]
West, principal at Employment Practices Specialists in Pacifica, California, offered her suggestions at SHRM’s annual conference and exhibition, held recently in Las Vegas. Here are her six scary phrases: 1. ‘You’re overcommitted’ When you say this, the applicant will hear: “Has kids and won’t stay late.” Sounds like discrimination. 2. ‘You lack skills necessary to […]
Employers that want to self-fund their health benefits (and the vendors and attorneys who want to serve them) have yet another (as they see it) unreasonable opponent to self-insuring health benefits. An adviser to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners has told NAIC that it should amend its model stop-loss coverage law to prohibit the […]
It’s important to disclose information through ERISA-required documents properly: it can be a plan administrator’s last line of defense if participants allege that they suffered losses because they didn’t know their rights or important plan terms. That obligation has grown in response to the financial scandals of the last decade (Enron, WorldCom, mortgage-leveraged bonds, etc.). […]
McAnally is president of SalesComp America, in Andover, Massachusetts. Killer #7. Design Comp Plans That Don’t Match Company Goals [Go here for mistakes 1 to 6.] Nobody’s going to be happy with the sales force if compensation plans don’t match up with company goals. Say you’re trying to launch a new product that is much […]
“I think what we’re going to see is that where there were takeaways or freezes, the money is going to be given back, but not across the board,” says Dorf, who is Managing Director of Compensation Resources, Inc. “Companies are doing it on a much more discrete basis, targeted to those employees who have really […]
A quick update on the case involving the state of Vermont’s demand for claims data from Liberty Mutual’s group health plan — the state agreed to drop its immediate demand for this information, pending the ultimate outcome of the lawsuit. The state’s health and insurance agency had issued a subpoena for this data, and Liberty […]
An insurance company recently sued the state of Vermont to block its attempt to get details on the employees and family members enrolled in the company’s group health plan, and the actual claims they’ve submitted. Vermont health care regulators want this information for a database designed to measure and improve the quality of health care […]
In this time of corporate restructuring, successor liability in relation to ERISA benefit plans is something to plan carefully in all of its dimensions before complicated, expensive claims take you by surprise. A case involving a top-hat deferred compensation plan — in which a federal court denied a successor employer’s motion to dismiss it from […]
A landmark Supreme Court ruling on relief available under ERISA in employee benefit cases is bringing cases back to life that we thought were dead and gone. In CIGNA v. Amara, the U.S. Supreme Court on May 16 ruled that ERISA’s enforcement provision allowing for “appropriate equitable relief” — ERISA Section 1132(a)(3) — aka Section […]