Resource Center

Keep up with The Latest and most up-to-date information provided by our team of experts. We do the research so you don’t have to.

Our Downloadable Resources will provide you with documents, such as a Health Care Reform Overview and the Health Care Reform Timeline, designed to help you wade through the sea of jargon to make sense of the new legislation.

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The Latest

Group Services Inc. offers a free guide, “Self-Funded Health Insurance Plans: What You Need to Know,” to help companies understand the benefits and risks of self-funded health insurance plans.

July 23, 2010 via Brad Johnson, Senior Advisor, Group Services: Guess what? PPACA (i.e. Health Care Reform) requires health plans to send out a large amount of new notices to show your plan meets all the requirements. The attached link should be very helpful to everyone. It summarizes what needs to be sent along with links to the model notices:

Open Enrollment Preparation: PPACA Notices from Nelson Mullins®.

I have a feeling that everyone’s “Open Enrollment” packets will be quite thick this year!

June 16, 2010 via Brad Johnson, Senior Advisor, Group Services: We now have clarification from the Department of Health and Human Services regarding what would cause a plan to lose “Grandfathered Status” and be subject to additional rules under Health Care Reform.

To me, the most eye opening rule is #7 – Cannot Change Insurance Companies. This means that even if you keep benefits as good (if not better than before), simply changing insurance carriers would cause your plan to lose grandfathered status.

Grandfathered plans (in existence on March 23):

1. Cannot Significantly Cut or Reduce Benefits

2. Cannot Raise Co-Insurance Charges

3. Cannot Significantly Raise Co-Payment Charges

4. Cannot Significantly Raise Deductibles

5. Cannot Significantly Lower Employer Contributions

6. Cannot Add or Tighten an Annual Limit on What the Insurer Pays

7. Cannot Change Insurance Companies

More details to follow. Be sure to read the PDF below:
Keeping the Health Plan You Have: The Affordable Care Act and “Grandfathered” Health Plans.

May 10, 2010 via Brad Johnson, Senior Advisor, Group Services: Today, the department of labor released regulations pertaining to covering adult children to age 26 per the new health care reform law(s). The biggest news is that they prohibit employers from charging an additional surcharge for adult children dependents. Before the regulation released today, the law was silent on the topic, leading many to wonder if that was possible. Unfortunately, as of today, the answer has been resolved via regulations —(i.e. you cannot). Here is a one page summary of what was released today:

Article: Adult-children Health Coverage Rules Bar Surcharge by BusinessInsurance.com.