Month: June 2009

You can read about it here at the Fiduciary Guidebook.

There is a very interesting study here from Wharton suggesting that better wellness programs could be created by employers to encourage workforce health and lower health insurance costs. The article suggests that offering employees a discount in their health insurance premiums at the end of the year is less effective than smaller incremental incentives of cash or lottery tickets given throughout the year. However, the article notes the following negatives with such programs:

Pauly pointed out that there are other issues that incentive programs must overcome, such as regulatory and legal barriers, employer reluctance to invest in programs that might not pay off until years later when many workers will be at different companies, and the resistance from employees themselves, who may see such incentive-based programs as overly paternalistic. It will also be tricky for employers to establish incentive-based programs without creating resentment among workers who don’t have any bad health habits to kick.

Indicates wide-spread concern. Excerpt:

• An overwhelming 70 percent oppose taxing benefits worth over $17,000 a year, a funding mechanism under discussion.
• Fifty-eight percent don’t buy President Obama’s pledge that reform can occur without forcing people to make undesired changes in their current coverage.
• The public splits about evenly, 49-47 percent, on another basic element, requiring all Americans to have health insurance. That varies widely, though as high as 70 percent support, as low as 44 percent depending on the terms of such a requirement.
• About eight in 10 are concerned that reform may reduce their quality, coverage and choice of care, and increase their costs, government bureaucracy and the federal deficit, with anywhere from 51 to 62 percent very worried about each of these.

View results of the poll here.

More at Freedom Project here.

Another Guidebook is in the works: The Tax-Exempt/Governmental Plans Guidebook. . .

TheCorporateCounsel.net Blog has a good summary here of the SEC’s and Treasury’s proposed changes to the executive compensation arena.

Also, Gene Sperling, Counselor to the Secretary of the Treausry, made the following statement:

. . . [T]here is substantial evidence that “firms use retirement benefits to provide executives with substantial amounts of `stealth compensation‘ — compensation not transparent to shareholders that is largely decoupled from performance.”

Great article here on 401(k) plan loans. The article actually discusses the effect 401(k) plan loans have on individuals contemplating bankruptcy.

As I read this account of Molson Canada’s decision to no longer supply its retirees with a certain beverage, I could not help pondering whether such a practice in the U.S. might be deemed to be an “ERISA plan.” While I won’t go into all the nuances of an argument like that, I will leave you with a link to a previous post–Benefits in Kind–Could They Be Subject to ERISA–in which I discussed how one court found (and the Fifth Circuit agreed) that a promise of grocery vouchers to retirees constituted a benefit protected by ERISA.

It is nice to have some humor while reading about what is going on in the health care reform arena since the subject weighs so heavy on many of our minds and hearts. Excerpt here from Kaiser Health News:

Politico notes that while “Nelson is no longer calling the public plan a ‘deal breaker’… On Wednesday, he said he could not back a public plan that jeopardized the private insurance coverage for 200 million Americans but he will ‘look at any public plan that is presented.’ ‘Those people who are out there attacking us are using the whack-a-mole approach–anyone who sticks their head up and says, ‘I won’t be supporting a single payer plan,’ they whack,’ Nelson said.”

By the way, I did not misspell “Whac-a-Mole” in the title to this post (lest the spelling enthusiasts email me). See Wikipedia entry here which says “[t]he object of the game is to force the individual moles back into their holes by hitting them directly on the head with the mallet, thereby adding to the player’s score. The more quickly this is done the higher the final score.” (There really couldn’t be a better analogy applied here. )

On a more serious note, don’t miss this Wall Street Journal op-ed by Karl Rove here.

This recent Eight Circuit case–Pendleton v. QuickTrip Corporation–is an ERISA 510 case that did not make it past a Motion for Summary Judgement. However, the case is noteworthy for the court’s discussion of attorneys’ fees:

The district court’s decision to deny attorney fees in this case was entered on the docket as ordered denied without authority. This statement could be interpreted as a determination that QuikTrip had not made a sufficient showing of factors in its favor to authorize an award of fees, but it is not free of ambiguity. Trial courts have many demands on their time, but nonetheless a district court should state the factors it is relying on in deciding an ERISA fee motion. See e.g. Toy v. Plumbers & Pipefitters Local Union No. 74 Pension Plan, 2009 WL 692398, *2 (3d Cir. 2009); Riley v. Admr of Supersaver 401K Capital Accumulation Plan for Employees of Participating AMR Corp. Subsidiaries, 209 F.3d 780, 782 (5th Cir. 2000).

From Keith Hennessey.com:

Here is a three-page outline of Key Features of the Tri-Committee Health Reform Draft Proposal in the House of Representatives, dated yesterday (June 8, 2009). . .