Increasing retirement plan-focused litigation has put insurance carriers and fiduciary service providers in difficult positions. In this article published in PLANSPONSOR, McDermott Partner Erin Turley said such litigation continues to be a “major focus” in the fiduciary insurance marketplace.
“It is a challenging market right now, to the point that we are looking at trying to think about ways that insurance products might be differently structured, to address what we hope will only be a short-term tightening in the market.”
On November 2, 2021, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that it will implement increased penalties for hospitals that do not comply with the Hospital Price Transparency Rule, effective January 1, 2022. CMS will also finalize several additional requirements for hospitals, including a requirement that hospitals ensure standard charge information is accessible to automated searches and direct downloads.
CMS will implement a sliding penalty scale based on the hospital’s number of beds. Hospitals with 30 or fewer beds will face a maximum daily penalty of $300, while hospitals with between 31 and 550 beds will face a maximum daily penalty of $10 per bed. Hospitals with more than 550 beds will face a maximum daily penalty of $5,500.
Lisa Schmitz Mazur discusses what states are doing to make telehealth more available, the changing Medicare reimbursement landscape and compliance considerations for providers implementing telehealth during this time.
The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (H.R. 6201) was signed into law on March 18, 2020. This summary reflects these changes that includes:
requiring employers to provide two weeks of paid sick leave in certain situations and provide subsidized leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act;
providing additional nutrition assistance to affected areas and populations through the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS);
and requiring private health plans to cover diagnostic testing for COVID-19 at no cost to customers.
A new IRS notice extends the deadline for individuals to make health savings account (HSA) contributions from April 15, 2020 to July 15, 2020. The IRS issued the notice to provide taxpayers with various tax filing and payment deadline extensions in response to the ongoing COVID-19 emergency.
In Depth
In response to the COVID-19 emergency, the IRS has issued Notice 2020-18, which extends certain tax filing and payment deadlines. All taxpayers with filing or payment deadlines of April 15, 2020 are eligible for relief under the Notice, regardless of whether they are directly impacted by COVID-19 (for example, due to illness or quarantine). The Notice extends the deadline for individuals to make contributions to their health savings accounts from April 15, 2020 to July 15, 2020.
HSAs allow individuals who are covered under high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) to contribute an amount up to IRS limits ($3,550 for individual coverage and $7,100 for family coverage in 2020), which is used to pay for certain eligible medical expenses on a pre-tax basis. HSA contributions are typically due by the federal income tax filing deadline of April 15. Because that deadline has now been extended to July 15, 2020, the IRS has also extended the deadline to make HSA contributions until the new filing deadline.
Earlier this month, the IRS allowed individuals covered by an HDHP to receive testing and care for COVID-19 without a deductible, or with a deductible below the HDHP minimum, without disqualifying the individual from making or receiving HSA contributions (see our previous On the Subject here).
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