Employee benefits compliance has many traps for the unwary and is ever evolving. Below, we have provided a primer on current issues of importance in the employee benefits area to help in-house attorneys identify potential risks, mitigate them, and know when to call an outside ERISA lawyer.
Employers that sponsor self-funded health plans have a host of complicated obligations. There are greater potential legal, regulatory, and fiduciary risks than in years past with managing health plans because of increased congressional legislation, increased Department of Labor (DOL) focus on group health plan compliance, and increased group health plan litigation, often by the same plaintiffs’ firms that have been suing 401(k) plans in fee litigation the past 20 years or more.
Employers should consider properly establishing a benefits committee, much like how they established committees for their retirement plans, that will serve to govern and oversee their employer-sponsored group health plans, especially those that are self-funded. A formal committee could help employers stay compliant, formalize their prudent decision-making process, and shift certain fiduciary liability to the benefits committee from the Board, thus insulating the Board from the underlying fiduciary decisions.
Self-insured health plans must show that...
Campbell’s, a renowned canned soup brand, recently terminated a high-ranking executive following the emergence of a recording in which he made racially insensitive statements and alleged that the ...