New W-2 Reporting Requirements of Health Care Reform

Last week I participated in a webinar to learn about the new W-2 reporting requirements of healthcare reform. This information will have to be reported on 2012 W-2s which will be provided to employees in January 2013. Here are the basics:

• Organizations only have to report this information if they issued 250 or more W-2s for the 2011 calendar year. 
• You do not have to report for retirees or anyone else that doesn't receive a W-2. 
• Generally speaking, you have to report on any benefits you are required to offer COBRA for, however, vision and dental are exempt for 2012. 
• Voluntary benefits do not have to be reported. Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) benefits do not have to be reported (even though you do offer COBRA) unless the employer contributes. Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRA) are also not included. 
• Something I learned that doesn't seem to be common knowledge -- you have to offer COBRA benefits on your EAP if it is a standalone plan. So, this would have to be reported.
• Report the premium charged or the COBRA cost without the 2% administrative fee. (This reflects the total cost of the coverage, not just the employer portion.)
• Wellness Programs will have to be reported if they qualify as a group health plan. The programs that qualify as group health plans generally seem to have onsite clinics. 
• The amount reported must reflect changes in coverage during the year -- individual to family etc... Ideally we'd input the cost of coverage when we set up the deductions in payroll, but we're going to have to play catch up this year. Guidelines weren't released by the IRS until this month, so most payroll providers aren't yet set up to track the information.
• If the final pay period straddles two reporting years, employers may use a reasonable allocation method to divide the cost between the two years, or treat the coverage period as occurring either entirely before December 31 or entirely after December 31. 
• This isn't something you want to mess up because the penalties are huge -- $30 to $100 per day per W-2. 

These benefits are not taxable at this time, but it seems to be laying the ground work for the government to tax "Cadillac" plans in the future. 

Thanks to Mark Sager at Alliant, our broker, for inviting me to join in the webinar with him. 

An Interview with Winter Pudge -- Sign Up for the Biggest Loser

We have 32 people signed up to participate in this years' Biggest Loser program so far. Hopefully this last minute push from Kristin Howard will get a few more of our colleagues to join in the fun. Many thanks to Kristin for starting today with a laugh. 

Biggest Loser 2012

We're kicking off another Biggest Loser Campaign and applying all the lessons we've learned from the past two years to make this a fun, engaging and successful program.

Six Simple Steps to Meaningful Goal Setting

Too often the process of setting and evaluating goals becomes transactional. When the big picture is lost, we rarely accomplish something that makes us proud. This simple process helps us anticipate the needs of our organization and develop meaningful team and individual goals. 

Step One: DEAR Time (Drop Everything And Read.) This helps us back away from the day-to-day things we are dealing with and look from a broader perspective. I usually find one article that forecasts HR trends that we all read and then we each pick things that sound interesting. We spend a hour or so reading. 

Step Two: Brainstorm trends and observations that may impact our work in the future. The last time we did this exercise, we came up with ten workplace trends that are impacting our work. 

Step Three: Brainstorm team goals. We mind map ours. 

Step Four: Select two people to work on each goal and identify the point person. (This stems from my belief that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket.) We each pick a different color marker. I circle the goals with the color selected by the people that will work on them.

Step Five: Convert your mind map into a nice neat spreadsheet that linear thinkers can read and you can use to track progress. If you have a lot of goals, categorize them by priority. 

Step Six: Develop individual goals in whatever format you use in your organization. At this point it’s helpful to note any resources that will be needed or any learning that will need to occur to accomplish each goal. Many people in our organization also focus on how they will measure and evaluate each goal at this time. I find that we are pretty in sync after completing the steps above and that this is not essential for us. 


I'm a believer in sharing your goals whether they're team goals or individual goals, but I explored another perspective on that in this post. 

Who's your willpower role model?

I enjoyed a story on the Today Show this morning about how to boost your willpower to achieve your goals. They interviewed Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., a Standford University lecturer. This five minute video segment provides a pretty good framework for considering willpower. And, I love the question they posed -- Who's your willpower role model?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Related Posts: 

Got Grit? 
Willpower 
Self Control and the HR Candy Jar

Can you limit your sitting and sleeping to just 23 and 1/2 hours per day?

Dr. Mike Evans makes a compelling case for exercising 30 minutes per day in this well done 9 minute video. It's the single best thing you can do for your health.





Dr. Evans is the founder of the Health Design Lab at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute and a professor at the University of Toronto and a staff physician at St. Michaell's Hospital. (I'd like this even if he had not mentioned Steven Blair from the University of South Carolina. Go Cocks!)

Many thanks to Bill Baulkwill for sharing this with me. 

Payer-Provider Lines Blur -- Another Trend in Healthcare

Have you noticed that the line between payers and providers is becoming blurred? More insurance companies now own groups of providers. There are numerous examples, but I’ve been paying particular attention to UnitedHealthcare’s launch of hi HealthInnovations -- a fully owned subsidiary that is providing steeply discounted hearing aids to some of its’ Medicare members as well as offering direct to consumer sales. Other examples include Humana’s purchase of Concentra, a Texas-based provider of stand-alone medical centers. Wellpoint recently acquired CareMore, a health plan operator that owns a number of clinics in the Los Angeles area. CIGNA controls a Phoenix medical group. There are flip side examples too, Partners HealthCare System Inc, a large hospital and physicians network in Massachusetts, acquired Neighborhood Health Plan, a Boston-based nonprofit insurer with 240,000 members. I found this article on the topic particularly interesting, Managed Care Enters The Exam Room As Insurers Buy Doctor Groups.  

Why the shift? Healthcare reform is minimizing profits, so insurance companies are diversifying. The Affordable Care Act limits the portion of premium dollars that can go towards administrative costs and profits. This year, a provision requiring insurance companies to spend 80 to 85 percent of premium dollars on medical care and health care quality improvement, rather than on administrative costs went into effect. In 2012, insurance companies will be required to provide a rebate to their customers if their profits exceed the mandated percentage.

Insurers are also under constant pressure from employers and other customers to minimize premium increases. If the insurance companies own the provider groups, they have more control over the costs. When I attended the United Healthcare’s Customer Forum last June, they mentioned that they were introducing a HMO in Florida at the request of some of the employers they work with. The thinking seemed to be that these employers would prefer to provide a limited HMO benefit to their employees than no benefit at all. Actually owning the provider groups doesn’t seem like such a huge leap from a HMO. Look at Kaiser as another example. And, isn’t that what is happening with the trend toward ACOs, Accountable Care Organizations. Some are being initiated by large physician groups, some by hospital systems, and others by health insurance companies. Humana, United Healthcare, and Cigna have all announced plans to form their own ACOs.

What impact will this have? Time will tell. Insurance companies controlling the providers might drive costs down, but ACOs could push costs up. As hospitals join forces with physicians and gain market share, they may have more leverage in negotiations with insurers. Benefits may become available to more people through delivery models like United's hi Healthinnovations, but consumer may have fewer choices of providers and durable medical suppliers. Americans typically place a high value on choice, but with 50 million people uninsured (16.3 percent of Americans) something has to give. Especially when you consider the fact that the percentage of people covered by employer-based health insurance has declined while the number of people covered by Medicare and Medicaid has increased.