Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), aka Healthcare Reform, health insurance companies are required to spend a minimum of their premium dollars for health care. This percentage, called medical loss ratio (MLR), is 80% of premiums for groups under 100 employees or 85% for groups with 100 or more employees. If an insurer does not meet this standard, it is required to rebate the excess to employers by August 1, 2012. Employers need to become familiar with the MLR rebate rules and if receiving a rebate, know what needs to be done to be compliant with the law.

Important Changes To Citizens Property Insurance Policies!If you have a home in Florida that has an insured replacement value over $1M, it's important to know that your options for insurance in the Florida marketplace are now extremely limited. Consult with your advisor prior to making any changes to your current Florida policies. If you receive a notice that your policy is affected by this 01/01/13 change, contact your advisor as soon as possible.

The Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. By a 5-4 vote, the individual mandate requiring most Americans to maintain "minimum essential" health insurance coverage, 26 U.S.C. 5000A, is affirmed as an exercise of Congress's taxing power.

The period between Memorial Day and Labor Day has been dubbed by auto club AAA and Volvo as "The 100 Deadliest Days" for teen drivers.

In December of last year, the Michigan state legislature enacted major reform to the state’s workers’ compensation law. We’d covered a few highlights of the legislation in a recent post and would like to call out one provision in particular that may have a major effect on claims – the new rules for what constitutes a “degenerative” condition and a “disability”.

Treatment of ‘degenerative’ and ‘disability’ under the new Michigan workers compensation law

A difficulty exists for insurance companies to defend ANY pollution exclusion that exists on the general liability policy due to language ambiguity. It is fair to say that policyholders might incur legal costs to force an insurance carrier into submission. Right now, in our opinion, the courts will lean toward siding with the policyholder in the State of Indiana. It is a very interesting situation. We are also anticipating some changes to the ISO Pollution Exclusion Form as a reaction to this latest ruling.

Workers’ Compensation rates are on the rise and this time they will inspire a connection between safety and wellness programs.

Leading companies, either through innovation or out of necessity, are integrating a culture of health into their organizations, not only to affect health insurance rates but also to mitigate their workers’ compensation costs. It is the strategy organizations are deploying to control long term costs and support a healthy workforce. Managing these two programs as one strategic initiative instead of individual silos is critical. And a significant side effect is healthier, higher performing employees who pay lower medical costs, are more productive, have fewer absences due to health issues, and have fewer and less severe workers’ compensation claims.

The IRS announced the inflation-adjusted increases for thresholds applicable to HSAs and High-Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs) for 2013.

The U.S. Department of Treasury this week signaled how the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will implement rules designed to collect fees from health insurers and self-insured health plans imposed by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in order to fund the Patient-Centered Outcome Research Trust Fund. According to the ACA, the funding requirements are as follows: