Most of the buzz around the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) has focused on overtime pay and tax relief. For HR teams, though, another big impact comes from how the law changes the employee benefits landscape.
Open enrollment is just around the corner, and new rules for HSAs, dependent care FSAs, and direct primary care arrangements could reshape how employees choose their benefits and how you plan for 2026 budgets.
Overlooking these employee benefits changes could lead to confusion and unexpected costs. Now’s the time to prepare so employees make informed choices and your organization avoids costly surprises.
OBBBA allows telehealth services to be covered by HDHPs without affecting employee eligibility to contribute to their HSAs, retroactive to January 1, 2025. Previously, employees had to meet their deductible before telehealth coverage could count toward HSA-eligible expenses, except for preventive care. Using telehealth before meeting the deductible would have disqualified the HSA, limiting access to remote care.
Brandon Long, an employee benefits attorney at McAfee & Taft, discussed how COVID influenced this change in a recent webinar. Because of the pandemic, telehealth became critical, so the government created an exception allowing first-dollar telehealth coverage, Long explained. But that exception was being sunsetted. The OBBBA now makes telehealth relief permitted coverage, meaning someone can get telehealth on a...
Claims that Brigitte Macron is a transgender woman first emerged online in 2021 and have since gone viral. “Two billion people have been exposed to this story in French and 2.5 billion in English,...