On Monday, September 9, 2024, the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury (the “Departments”) issued their final rule regarding the nonquantitative treatment limitation (NQTL) comparative analysis...more
9/11/2024
/ Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ,
Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Employee Benefits ,
Employer Group Health Plans ,
Final Rules ,
Health Insurance ,
Healthcare ,
Mental Health ,
Mental Health Parity Rule ,
MHPAEA ,
NQTLs ,
Proposed Rules ,
U.S. Treasury
Seyfarth Synopsis: Following years of back and forth, new final rules were published by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on May 6, 2024 reinstituting the Department’s interpretation that the prohibition on...more
5/21/2024
/ Affordable Care Act ,
Covered Entities ,
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ,
Employee Benefits ,
Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) ,
Final Rules ,
Gender Identity ,
Health Insurance ,
LGBTQ ,
OCR ,
Section 1557 ,
Sex Discrimination ,
Transgender
This past Monday, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued its final rule aimed at strengthening the HIPAA Privacy rules as they are applied to reproductive health data....more
4/30/2024
/ Abortion ,
Data Privacy ,
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ,
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ,
Final Rules ,
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ,
HIPAA Privacy Rule ,
OCR ,
Patient Privacy Rights ,
PHI ,
Reproductive Healthcare Issues
The agencies have finalized a portion of their proposed rules impacting so-called “junk insurance” regarding short-term limited-duration insurance, but deferred finalizing the more significant changes that would have impacted...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Last week, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that cryogenically frozen embryos are children and are protected from destruction under state law. This is the latest in a series of post-Dobbs judicial rulings...more
2/28/2024
/ Abortion ,
AL Supreme Court ,
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ,
Employee Benefits ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Family Planning Clinics ,
Fertility Treatments ,
Health Care Providers ,
Health Insurance ,
Healthcare ,
Human Embryos ,
Internal Revenue Code (IRC) ,
Patient Access ,
Reproductive Healthcare Issues ,
Wrongful Death
Employers looking to enhance their suite of employee benefit programs, and focused on lessons learned during the pandemic on wellbeing, are interested in providing greater access to wellness tools. And, the vendors who...more
1/30/2024
/ Data Privacy ,
Data Protection ,
Electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) ,
Employee Benefits ,
Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) ,
Employees ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Health Care Providers ,
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ,
Healthcare ,
Mobile App Privacy Guidelines ,
Mobile Apps ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Popular ,
Wellness Programs
Seyfarth Synopsis: It’s here for your post-Thanksgiving turkey hangover reading pleasure! The Department of Treasury and IRS released on Friday (in the middle of most people’s long holiday weekend) their proposed rules for...more
11/29/2023
/ 401k ,
Eligibility Determination ,
Employee Benefits ,
Employees ,
Internal Revenue Code (IRC) ,
IRS ,
Part-Time Employees ,
Proposed Rules ,
Retirement Plan ,
Safe Harbors ,
SECURE Act ,
U.S. Treasury
Seyfarth Synopsis: Fresh on the heels of the IRS Chief Counsel Memorandum on wellness and indemnity products, discussed in our prior post here, the agencies have weighed in with more formal and more expansive guidance...more
By this point, most people in the employee benefits space have heard about the MOVEit and Retirement Clearing House (RCH) cyber incidents, which could directly impact employers’ benefit plans. The MOVEit file transfer...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Just like a bad penny, schemes promising employers ways to reduce their FICA tax burden, and maybe their employees’ income tax burden at the same time, keep popping up with a slightly different burnish on...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (“CAA”) contains a requirement that that group health plans may not have agreements with service providers that would restrict certain information that the plan may...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: In an anticipated decision, released late on Friday April 7, 2023 of the Easter weekend, Texas District Court Judge Kacsmaryk has halted the FDA’s approval of Mifepristone. While in Washington State,...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Following over a decade of protracted litigation over the Affordable Care Act, and several failed attempts by Congress to get rid of the ACA entirely, a Texas federal district court ruled on March 30, 2023...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: At the end of November, the DOL issued final regulations on ERISA’s fiduciary duties when investing plan assets. According to the DOL, these final regulations retain the longstanding core principles that...more
As we have been covering, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade in their Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, leaving it to states to regulate access to abortion in their territory. The Biden Administration’s...more
Culminating a flurry of late June opinions released by SCOTUS this week, the court today in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has taken the extraordinary step of ending decades of precedent surrounding the...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: The SECURE Act, passed just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic at the end of 2019, significantly altered the retirement plan landscape. For a reminder on how the SECURE Act changed the retirement...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: In keeping with their recent more vocal stance on fiduciary duties, the Department of Labor has weighed in on the wisdom of 401(k) plans including an ESG fund or a crypto investment option in its line-up....more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Last summer and fall, the Departments of Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services issued Interim Final Rules (IFRs) [here] and [here], implementing the sweeping changes that applied to out-of-network...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Reminiscent of the DOL’s about-face on ESG investing by ERISA fiduciaries [discussed here], this week the DOL has issued a “supplemental statement” on its view of the use of private equity investments in...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: For those of you following the saga of ERISA’s fiduciary duties and ESG investing, we are nearing a possible finish line. The latest turn in the saga came when the DOL issued a new set of proposed...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: We previously discussed how to apply the HIPAA wellness rules to a premium differential based on a participant’s vaccination status in our Legal Update. At the time, we were left to interpret the existing...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: As employers continue to struggle with strategies for safely re-opening their workplaces, we have previously discussed the possibility of mandating a vaccine or providing incentives for getting the vaccine....more
Seyfarth Synopsis: The No Surprises Act (the “Act”) was part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 signed into law last December 2020. The Act was aimed at protecting insured individuals from getting a bill from a...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: The DOL has waded into a long-simmering debate about whether audio recordings of phone calls between a plan participant and the plan’s administrator or insurer should be provided to the participant when...more