Category: Employee Benefits

Mid-Market Benefits Benchmarking

When making decisions about your employer-sponsored healthcare benefits strategy, it is critical to compare your benefit plans to those offered by other employers of a similar size. Benefits benchmarking allows you to remain competitive from a talent acquisition perspective and can uncover opportunities for improvement in the midst of the chaotic healthcare landscape.

Each year, Scott Benefit Services, alongside a leading actuarial consulting firm, conducts a Mid-Market Benefits Benchmarking Survey to help guide employers as they make decisions about their employee benefit plans for the following year. 

Results from the 2017 survey reveal several healthcare benefits trends including:  

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Skinny Repeal Bill Fails in the Senate

Around 1:30 a.m. on Friday morning, in a surprising vote, Senator John McCain walked to the dais of the Senate and uttered one word, “No.” There were gasps on the Senate floor as Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) had already voted against the skinny repeal bill that had appeared to be gaining traction with GOP Senators. The plan was not to pass that particular bill as law, but to find the lowest common denominator that could be agreed upon and continue to work with the House GOP in conference to find something that could replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA). 

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Senate Votes Yes on Motion to Proceed

This afternoon the Senate voted to move forward on debate of the healthcare bill. It’s important to note that this vote only allows the Senate to move …Continue Reading

Lee and Moran Announce Opposition to BCRA; McConnell Changes Course

Last night (Monday, July 17) Senators Jerry Moran and Mike Lee simultaneously released statements that they would not vote to proceed to debate on the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA). With Senators Rand Paul and Susan Collins already in the “no” column, this announcement made it clear to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that he would not be able to proceed as planned. In a statement released last night he stated, “Regretfully, it is now apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful.” He then stated, “In the coming days, the Senate will vote to take up the House bill with the first amendment in order being what a majority of the Senate has already supported in 2015 and that was vetoed by then-President Obama: a repeal of Obamacare with a two-year delay to provide for a stable transition period.”

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Senate Releases Updated BCRA Draft

The Senate released an updated draft of the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) on Thursday, July 13, 2017. To view the full text of the bill, click here. To view the updated section by section summary, click here.

There were a few major changes to the original draft issued on June 22, including:  

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