Monday Briefing
Sorry to be late on this post. My fingers went most the week without touching a keyboard after last week’s Monday Briefing. (I guess I wouldn’t do so well at Amazon.) Other than Lynn Dudley at the American Benefits Council (see below) it looks like many were getting in those last summer reads or preparing kids for school. Here are a few items we have been watching.
- De Ja Vu all over again. Another Obamacare challenge tossed. The latest claimed that the religious exemptions in ACA establish a national religion in violation of the “establishment clause” of the Constitution. Not so fast, says the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. (Cutler v U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)
- For an infographic on the impact of religious exemptions on employer plans and contraception, take a look here. (Kaiser)
- Amazing what you can find on the internet these days. For a dataset on essential health benefits by state, take a look at this Robert Wood Johnson Foundation project. (RWJF.org) (The website requests the following citation: Baker, T.; Town, R. (2014): Health Insurance Exchanges 2.0 Dataset. Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.)
- We are watching the proposed fiduciary regulations closely. That little tiny space of light between the rock (education) and the hard place (fiduciary actions) gets much smaller if these things are finalized. Take a look here for the American Benefits Council’s latest media release on the topic. (American Benefits Council)