COBRA Subsidies Under ARPA - COBRA Administrators and Insurance Companies Should Help On March 11th, 2021, President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) into law. ARPA is a $1.9 trillion economic relief bill that gives financial help during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The new law includes section [...]
Walmart has taken a big step towards fixing the “broken” U.S. health Care system by creating Walmart Health. These are clinics that offer primary medical care, mental health counseling, X-rays, labs, dental services, and vision and hearing services at one location. As of December 2020 Walmart has 14 health clinics. [...]
Employee Medical Clinic As a sign of change in medical care delivery, Amazon has opened its first health care clinic for its employees in Dallas, Texas. According to the Amazon announcement, “Amazon expects to establish 20 health centers in five cities across the U.S., improving access and care [...]
California law requires employers with five or more staff members to train employees and supervisors to prevent sexual harassment and abusive behavior in the workplace. California Senate Bill 778 set January 1, 2021 as the deadline for compliance with this law. According to SB 778, the penalty for non-compliance [...]
Although COVID-19 is a crisis on both a human and economic level, one small silver lining is it may cause medical insurance rates to fall in 2021. The reason: A massive reduction in elective medical care. The Best-Case Scenario—A Reduction in Medical Expense Spending Two recently [...]
Benefits Cafe began a COVID-19 Crisis Update page last week where we have information from governments and insurance companies about their revised policies to accommodate these unusual times. The update page also has breaking news that should be helpful to businesses that are forced to make difficult decisions. Today, [...]
Insurance Company Information on COVID-19 Matters Aetna Aetna Employee Assistance Program (EAP) Member Flyer Aetna COVID-19 Member Information Page Aetna Plan Sponsor Email CVS Health Announces COVID-19 Resources for Aetna Members CVS Health Announces Additional COVID-19 Resources Focused on Patient Rx Access Anthem Anthem Employee [...]
Less than two weeks ago, I wrote a blog post that predicted that fireworks would hit California’s small group health insurance market with UHC’s new Association Health Plans. Well, sparks flew. Yesterday, UnitedHealth Care announced that because of “regulatory inquiries over the past couple of weeks” UHC has suspended the [...]
UnitedHealth Care (UHC) kicked-off Summer 2019 with a bang. During a webinar to their top brokers on July 1st, they made the game-changing announcement that they will introduce 9 new Association Health Plans (AHP) into the California small group marketplace (1-100 employees.)By screening enrollees for pre-existing medical conditions and [...]
On Wednesday, I was fortunate to be included in a round table discussion with the senior leadership of Kaiser Permanente's small group sales and account management team. To encourage discussion, Kaiser limited participation to a few key brokers. (2019 Kaiser Key Broker Engagement Luncheon, Pasadena, California. Third from [...]