HR News Alert – March 2016 Issue As a reminder, employers subject to the new Affordable Care Act (ACA) information reporting requirements must furnish the first statements for the 2015 calendar year to employees on or before March 31, 2016. Learn more. Three Changes Consumers Can Expect In Next Year’s Obamacare Coverage Health insurance isn’t simple. Neither are government regulations. Put the two together and things can get confusing fast. So it’s not surprising that federal regulators took a stab at making things a bit more straightforward for consumers in new rules unveiled in late February and published Tuesday in the Federal Register. Read more. A court case that could hurt Obamacare's health Just when you thought Obamacare was past legal challenges. A pending federal lawsuit threatens to end the billions of dollars in reimbursement that insurers get from the government annually to lower out-of-pocket health expenses for up to 7 million Obamacare customers. Read more. To get more kids health care, train their neighbors to navigate insurance maze Nearly 5 million children are uninsured in the United States, and researchers think they’ve found a new strategy to get them coverage: enlist their neighbors to help. Read more. Wellness programs do little to lower healthcare costs Wellness programs… Long the silver bullet to crushing healthcare costs and making offering benefits to employees more affordable. This has been in the benefit world vernacular for well over a decade, so why are we not seeing the impacts of this? Read more. Planning more effective benefit engagement strategies Employers say employees don’t have a high level of understanding about their employee benefits, yet many don’t or won’t engage with benefit communications. Employers and advisers should work to simplify communications and tailor information to interested audiences, experts say. Read more. Student researchers find mixed results with Affordable Care Act at William and Mary symposium More young adults are benefiting from non-emergency hospital care under the Affordable Care Act, student researchers said Friday, but the legislation has resulted in scant improvements to primary care physician access or to reducing emergency room use for non-emergency conditions. Read more. Health Care Briefs for March 14 - 18, 2016 ACA Plan Members Increased Number Of Prescriptions By 8.6 Percent in 2015. The Washington Post (3/15) reports according to an analysis conducted by Express Scripts, consumers in health plans offered through ACA exchanges are increasing "their use of prescription medications more rapidly than those in employer or government-sponsored plans. Read more. UPMC Newsletter | Your job may have just become easier Announcing the first issue in 2016, of the UPMC Health Plan producer e-newsletter. Read more. 2016 Product Information Find all the current product information on our website. Read more. You're Invited to the UPMC Spring Producer Meeting! Find out new information about our products and services. Make sure you attend our Producer Kickoff meeting! Read more. Weekly PPACA Update Conference Call In a continuing effort to assist our agent-partners in getting the information needed to flourish within the under 65 group and individual markets in Pennsylvania, we are holding weekly live webinars. They will serve as a place to get your questions answered and discuss topics and strategies that will lead to your continued success in the health insurance market. Register once and you'll be signed up for all of the 2016 Weekly PPACA Conference Calls. Register now. Weekly PPACA Conference Call Archives Click here to view the archived recordings of the PPACA Conference Calls. |