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Employees Don’t Favor Required Wellness Programs

Employees Don’t Favor Required Wellness Programs

Most employees don’t think they should be required to participate in wellness programs to qualify for employer-provided health insurance, according to a new survey released by the National Business Group on Health. Moreover, they don’t think employers should charge employees more for health coverage if they don’t meet specific health goals.

Employees oppose the linking of their health plan to wellness program participation, with 62% opposing charging employees more for health coverage if they do not participate in wellness programs. Over 80% of employees favor offering a financial reward to employees who meet specific health goals but only 29% favor charging employees more for health coverage if they don’t meet health goals. Sixty-eight percent oppose requiring employees to participate in a wellness program in order to qualify for health insurance.

“You can give them more, but you can’t charge them or take it away from them, according to these employees,” noted Helen Darling, president, NBGH, during a press briefing.

However, the survey of 1,545 employees at companies with 2,000 or more employees also found nearly four-in-ten (39%) rank biometric screenings as a very important health benefit program, followed by exercise programs (31%) and onsite fitness centers (31%). Interestingly, 35% of employees don’t consider any of these programs to be very important.

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Dropping Heath Coverage Not Clearly Advantageous, Study Finds

Dropping Heath Coverage Not Clearly Advantageous, Study Finds

A study published in July 2012 by Truven Health Analytics found that employers opting to drop their health care plans in 2014 and pay the penalty imposed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will not benefit economically in the short- or long-term.

Beginning in 2014, employers with 50 or more full-time employees will be required to provide “minimum essential” health care coverage for their full-time employees or pay an annual penalty of $2,000 per employee (excluding the first 30 employees). The study, Modeling the Impact of “Pay or Play Strategies on Employer Health Costs, analyzes four separate benefit design scenarios in which employers eliminate their group health coverage to determine how employers fare under this “pay or play” system.

The report includes the following key findings:

• Employers will not experience immediate or long-term cost advantages if they choose to eliminate group health benefits.

• It will be more costly for employers to “make employees whole” when shifting their benefits to a health insurance exchange (“Exchange”) than to continue existing group health plans.

• Dropping employer-provided coverage will result in a significant reduction in overall employee compensation, as the incremental costs of benefits will shift to the employees.

The study concludes that:

Employers must provide market value—in benefits and compensation—to retain skilled workers and will not be able to unilaterally cut benefits and expect employees to absorb the projected inefficiency of exchanged-based coverage. The potential penalties for dropping group plans, as well as the net gain most employees would need to receive in their compensation packages to make up for not receiving health benefits, should be enough to discourage most companies from discontinuing such services to their workers.

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Medical staffing company in Nebraska sued in hepatitis C case

Medical staffing company in Nebraska sued in hepatitis C case

DOVER — One of the victims of the hepatitis C outbreak at Exeter Hospital has filed a lawsuit against a Nebraska company he believes hired the suspect in the case.

In a five-count lawsuit filed on Sunday, the patient and his attorney accused Triage Staffing, Inc., of negligence in connection with the viral outbreak.

According to the lawsuit, Triage, of Omaha, Neb., hires health care workers known as “travelers” and places them to work at hospitals around the United States on a contract basis for short periods — often approximately 13 weeks.

David M. Kwiatkowski, the suspect in the hepatitis C outbreak, has been employed as a traveling medical technician in at least eight states since 2007. Federal investigators are continuing to probe his background to compile a full employment history.
Kwiatkowski was hired by Exeter Hospital as a traveling technician in April 2011. He was then hired to work in the hospital’s cardiac catheterization laboratory as a full-time employee later in the year.

Prosecutors say Kwiatkowski spread the liver disease to Exeter Hospital patients in the course of abusing stolen hospital narcotics. Kwiatkowski allegedly stole syringes of the anesthesia drug fentanyl, injected himself, then allowed syringes contaminated with his blood to be reused on patients.

Kwiatkowski tested positive for hepatitis C as early as June 2010, according to federal investigators.
Boston medical malpractice attorney Domenic Paolini, of the firm Paolini and Haley, is representing the Seabrook man who filed suit against Triage this week. According to their complaint, Triage was the company that employed Kwiatkowski when he was first hired in Exeter.
Triage has not returned calls seeking comment since Friday, July 20.

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New E-Verify Requirement For Pa. Public Works Contractors, Beginning January 1, 2013

New E-Verify Requirement For Pa. Public Works Contractors, Beginning January 1, 2013

On July 5, 2012, Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas Corbett signed into law S.B. 637, requiring state public works contractors and subcontractors involved in projects of more than $25,000 to use E-Verify starting on January 1, 2013, or they will lose their right to contract with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

E-Verify is a free Internet-based system that is maintained and administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The system allows employers to input employee personal details and have that information compared to data from DHS and Social Security Administration records to confirm employment eligibility. In approximately 98 percent of their submissions, employers will receive a positive answer confirming employment eligibility from the system within seconds. However, for the remaining approximately 2 percent of submissions with a discrepancy in the data, it may take two to four weeks for resolution. During this time period, employers are not permitted to hire or take any adverse employment actions against employees. DHS statistics indicate that more than half of those approximately 2 percent of employees will later be found not authorized to work in the United States.

Under S.B. 637, the Pennsylvania Department of General Services is required to create an E-Verify usage certification form—which all contractors, subcontractors and staffing companies providing services on public works projects will be required to sign under penalty of perjury—verifying that they have enrolled and are using the system for all new hires starting on January 1, 2013. Under the new law, providing a false certification is punished by a civil fine ranging from $250 to $1,000.

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OOIDA Sues FMCSA over Pre-Employment Screening Program

OOIDA Sues FMCSA over Pre-Employment Screening Program

By TruckingInfo Staff

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s pre-employment screening program violates drivers’ rights, claims the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association in a lawsuit. OOIDA told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that under the program, drivers can be in effect found guilty of safety violations before they get due process in court.

The program gives employers access to the records of drivers who are applying for work, but OOIDA claims that the data in the system is not always accurate and is difficult to correct.

OOIDA cites the experience of three drivers who were cited for alleged violations. The drivers challenged their citations in court and were either acquitted or had their cases dismissed, the association said.

But when they tried to use the agency’s DataQ system to get their records corrected, the agency refused to make the changes, OOIDA claimed in its suit.

“By refusing to accept the determination by a court, the FMCSA has in essence made state law enforcement agencies the final judge and jury on all citations,” said Jim Johnston, OOIDA president, in a statement. “This can ultimately threaten business opportunities and income.”

OOIDA wants the court to tell the agency to purge from the database any inspection reports that allege violations, if a court has not ruled on the driver’s guilt. It also wants purged any reports concerning violations that the agency has not found to be “serious driver-related violation(s).”

In addition, the association wants the pre-employment screening program to tell employers if a violation that shows up in the database is being disputed by the driver, and why the driver is challenging the information.

Dangerous Caregivers for Elderly: Agencies Place Unqualified, Possibly Criminal Caregivers in Homes of Vulnerable Seniors

Dangerous Caregivers for Elderly

If you hire a caregiver from an agency for an elderly family member, you might assume the person had undergone a thorough criminal background check and drug testing, was experienced and trained for the job.

You’d be wrong in many cases, according to new Northwestern Medicine research.

A troubling new national study finds many agencies recruit random strangers off Craigslist and place them in the homes of vulnerable elderly people with dementia, don’t do national criminal background checks or drug testing, lie about testing the qualifications of caregivers and don’t require any experience or provide real training.

“People have a false sense of security when they hire a caregiver from an agency,” said lead study author Lee Lindquist, M.D., an associate professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “There are good agencies out there, but there are plenty of bad ones and consumers need to be aware that they may not be getting the safe, qualified caregiver they expect. It’s dangerous for the elderly patient who may be cognitively impaired.”

The study will be published in the July 13 issue of the Journal of American Geriatrics Society.

Lindquist, a geriatrician, personally has seen a number of bad caregivers accompanying patients in her clinic. “Some of the paid caregivers are so unqualified it’s scary and really puts the senior at risk,” she said.

Lindquist had a 103-year-old patient whose illiterate caregiver was mixing up her own medications and the patient’s medications. The caregiver was giving her own medicines to the elderly patient by mistake. Another patient had dropped 10 percent of her weight and developed pressure ulcers because her caregiver was not properly feeding her or getting her out of bed.

“It was easier for the caregiver to sit and watch TV and not to try to feed the patient or move her,” Lindquist said.

Several agencies surveyed in the study actually made up names of screening tests they claimed to give their job applicants.

“We had agencies say they used a ‘National Scantron Test for Inappropriate Behavior’ and an ‘Assessment of Christian Morality Test’,” Lindquist said. “To our knowledge, these tests don’t exist. If you’re not a smart consumer, you won’t recognize which agencies are being deceitful.”

Identifying the good agencies from the bad is difficult because many agencies have slick websites and marketing campaigns, she added.

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Checklist of 408(b)(2) Plan Fiduciary Obligations After the July 1, 2012 Deadline; and What About Welfare Plans?

Checklist of 408(b)(2) Plan Fiduciary Obligations After the July 1, 2012 Deadline; and What About Welfare Plans?

July 1, 2012 was the deadline for “covered service providers” to provide newly required fee disclosures under ERISA section 408(b)(2). Now that the July 1 deadline has passed, retirement plan fiduciaries have an obligation to do the following:

Identify all service providers potentially being paid directly or indirectly from the plan for their services

Confirm that every service provider on the list has provided comprehensive fee disclosures as required by the regulations or adequately explained why compliance isn’t necessary.

For any service providers that failed to either provide the required disclosures or adequately explain why compliance isn’t necessary, the plan fiduciary must:

Immediately request in writing that the service provider fully comply as soon as possible and/or explain why it believes it is not required to comply.

Notify the Department of Labor within the earlier of 90 days of the date of the written request for full compliance or, if earlier, 30 days of the date that the service provider communicates its refusal to comply. Among other required information, the notice must identify whether the covered service provider continues to provide services to the plan.

Determine whether to terminate the contract or arrangement consistent with the fiduciary’s duty to act prudently under ERISA section 404.

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Opinion: Health-care law helps small businesses be socially responsible

Opinion: Health-care law helps small businesses be socially responsible

As someone who provides counsel to businesses and nonprofits, I have always stressed the value of social responsibility as a long-term business strategy. In essence, it is a way to invest in the people and communities that allow your business to run and even prosper.

Sterlin says the law could actually help small businesses attract talent. (Evan Vucci – AP) I have been reminded of this over the last couple weeks as I watched the debate unfold over the Supreme Court decision to largely uphold the president’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) that Congress approved two years ago.

Critics argue that the law is an overreach by the government that will place onerous mandates on businesses and individuals. The National Restaurant Association, for example, was quick to attack the high court’s decision, arguing that the employer requirements “threaten the economic health of the restaurant industry” and will “impact restaurant operators’ ability to grow and create jobs.”

Other business owners raised similar concerns, claiming the decision jeopardized their ability to provide health care coverage to employees.

But it is important not to overgeneralize when discussing the impact the health care law will have on businesses. In fact, for companies with fewer than 50 full-time employees, the law actually provides a golden opportunity for making the kind of investment that I believe make businesses stronger in the long run.

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Employer Group Health Plans and the Constitutionality of the ACA

Employer Group Health Plans and the Constitutionality of the ACA

Focus turns to completing 2012 and 2013 compliance tasks following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that virtually the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) is constitutional (with the exception of a Medicaid issue that is not directly relevant to employers), validating the full range of past, present, and future ACA requirements. Employers now must continue to press ahead with 2012 and 2013 ACA compliance requirements, particularly if these tasks were placed on a back burner awaiting the decision.

The Decision

Writing for a 5-4 majority in National Federation of Independent Business et al. v. Sebelius, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., found that the individual mandate in the ACA is a permissible exercise of Congress’s taxing authority, stating that “[t]he Affordable Care Act’s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax.” Chief Justice Roberts also wrote that “because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness.” Chief Justice Roberts was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen G. Breyer, and Elena Kagan. Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr., dissented.

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