HIPAA privacy rules and compliance with federal and state employment laws: the participant authorization form

Although HIPAA privacy rules do not apply directly to employers or to employment records, they do apply indirectly to employers because employer-sponsored group health plans and all health care providers are covered. HIPAA privacy regulations overlap with federal and state employment laws, and liabilities for breach of confidentiality can be substantial. Employers can use a participant's authorization form to comply with employment laws and company policies. Sample authorization forms are provided at the end of this article.     

Fraud and fiduciary liability

All employee benefit plans are potential targets of fraudulent schemes. Smaller plans are targeted by unscrupulous brokers and promoters selling fraudulent policies; plans large enough to be self-insured face greater risks of fraud by providers and participants misrepresenting claims. Plan trustees, administrators and consultants should be alert to the many ways fraudulent schemes manifest themselves and to the legal remedies available; establish investigative programs to detect and discourage fraud; and promote education and plan incentives for participants to report fraud.     

Liquidity-related plan asset issues

By about 2025, most baby boomers will have retired, which will put a tremendous strain on public sector pension plans. Many will experience negative cash flows, and liquidity will be an increasing concern. Asset/liability studies can help measure the effect of this risk on system funding and contribution requirements, resulting in more informed asset allocation choices and benefit policies.     

The Privacy Rule: HIPAA standards for the privacy of individually identifiable health information

The main objective of the HIPAA Privacy Rule is to provide a uniform and simplified minimum standard for the privacy of individually identifiable health information. Five broad categories are covered: boundaries, security, consumer control, accountability and public responsibility. Compliance with the Privacy Rule includes appointing a security official, making some basic assessments about a fund's current policies and procedures, assessing security protocols for network systems, developing a participant complaint mechanism and creating an internal grievance procedure for employer action and employee whistle-blowing. At this writing, although the final standards are still under debate, most health care plans should accept the regulation and begin compliance procedures. Successful implementation of the Privacy Rule can streamline fund operations and give participants the added security and peace of mind they demand.     

Privacy and security concerns in online health services

There is a growing interest in Internet privacy and security concerns. This article investigates Internet privacy and security concerns to determine whether such concerns hinder online health service use under different policies that enhance privacy and security protection. Empirical findings show a negative association between online privacy and security concerns and the use of online health services. Regulations enhancing customers’ privacy and security moderate the negative relation.     

A review of dental plans: PPOs and referral plans to dominate future

This important benefit has changed greatly in the last 20 years. Double-digit health care cost increases in the late 1980s caused indemnity plans to evolve into network plans, such as dental HMOs and PPOs. PPOs and referral or access plans now seem to be the plans of choice.     

Account-based retiree medical plans: what's good for your pension plan may be good for your retiree medical plan

Many of the same forces that caused employers to gravitate toward account-based pension plans are beginning to spark similar changes in retiree medical plans. As medical costs continue to escalate, account-based retiree medical plans offer a new way to manage company outlays, while preserving an important benefit for retirees.     

DEFINED CONTRIBUTION PLANS, DEFINED BENEFIT PLANS, AND THE ACCUMULATION OF RETIREMENT WEALTH

The private pension structure in the United States, once dominated by defined benefit (DB) plans, is currently divided between defined contribution (DC) and DB plans. Wealth accumulation in DC plans depends on a participant's contribution behavior and on financial market returns, while accumulation in DB plans is sensitive to a participant's labor market experience and to plan parameters. This paper simulates the distribution of retirement wealth under representative DB and DC plans. It uses data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to explore how asset returns, earnings histories, and retirement plan characteristics contribute to the variation in retirement wealth outcomes. We simulate DC plan accumulation by randomly assigning individuals a share of wages that they and their employer contribute to the plan. We consider several possible asset allocation strategies, with asset returns drawn from the historical return distribution. Our DB plan simulations draw earnings histories from the HRS, and randomly assign each individual a pension plan drawn from a sample of large private and public defined benefit plans. The simulations yield distributions of both DC and DB wealth at retirement. Average retirement wealth accruals under current DC plans exceed average accruals under private sector DB plans, although DC plans are also more likely to generate very low retirement wealth outcomes. The comparison of current DC plans with more generous public sector DB plans is less definitive, because public sector DB plans are more generous on average than their private sector DB counterparts.     

"十三五"以来广东省海洋经济发展政策概析

“十三五”时期,广东省积极部署海洋强省建设,着力从海洋经济顶层设计、海洋产业发展、海洋资源环境优化利用与保护等方面出台并落实多项规划政策、意见措施及行动方案等,对于加快广东省海洋传统产业转型升级,壮大海洋新兴产业,改善海洋生态环境等方面均发挥了有效的积极作用。在系统梳理 “十三五”以来广东省出台的海洋经济相关政策规划基础上,总结支持广东省海洋经济发展的相关政策主要特点,分析涉海相关政策实施背景下广东省海洋经济发展状况,探讨广东省海洋经济发展与政策存在的问题与不足,并研究提出促进广东省海洋经济高质量发展的对策建议。     

利用税收优惠政策激励企业研发投入——澳大利亚政府的企业研发经费减税政策的综述

本文较详细地报告了澳大利亚的研发经费减税计划以及最新出台的研发税收信用政策,介绍了澳大利亚研发经费减税政策的实施步骤和相关的管理机构、中请办法、具体要求及研发费用的认定原则。文章还阐述了研发税收信用新政策的主要特点及与原政策措施的差别,并针对我国的情况提出了一些建议,供相关部门参考。     

Employee benefits annual checkup

An annual checkup is a prudent preventive measure for employee benefit plans. It allows plan fiduciaries to assess the overall "health" of the plans they administer and to make proactive corrections. This article lists some of the most important items to consider in evaluating a plan.     

Reading and understanding employee benefit plan financial statements

If your employee benefit plan has more than 100 participants, chances are you've had to work your way through the audited financial statements you're required to include with your Form 5500 filing. These statements contain a wealth of information about the financial health of your plan, and understanding them is an important fiduciary responsibility. To strengthen your grasp of financial statements, this article gives an overview that will make a plan's financial statements more informative, explains their basic structure and provides information on some of the more arcane aspects (such as actuarial tables). While this article focuses on Taft-Hartley (multiemployer) plans, much of it applies to other types of employee benefit plans.     

Quality-adjusted price indexes for portable computers

The aim of this article is to identify the variables affecting the decision to make contributions to personal pension plans and the amount of such contributions. For this purpose, we specify and estimate a Tobit model for a sample based on the 1995 Personal Income Taxpayers Panel prepared by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finance) formed by 3041 taxpayers, of whom 358 made contributions to pension plans. Our results suggest that individuals decide to invest in pension plans on complex grounds combining the wish to benefit from tax savings and to ensure they will receive supplementary income upon retirement.     

巴黎发展绿色交通及其对北京的启示

巴黎市拥有与北京市相近的地域面积、人口数量以及机动车保有量，近30年来一直奉行可持续发展交通的城市规划理念，并取得了良好成绩。从法国交通发展国家政策以及巴黎市交通发展规划入手，通过梳理巴黎多年来发展绿色交通的政策措施及其成效，并与北京市交通的现状和问题进行了对比，以期为北京发展绿色交通提出对策建议。     

从4万亿投资推动内需计划看中国内需提振

在世界经济金融危机日趋严峻的形势下,中国政府提出十大措施,在未来两年内投资4万亿元,以刺激经济的政策计划,以扩大内需为主要方式,抵御国际经济环境对中国的不利影响,采取灵活审慎的宏观经济政策,应对复杂多变的形势,通过分析当前扩大内需这项政策的必要性,提出相关政策要点,促进经济平稳较快增长。     

HIPAA: update on rule revisions and compliance requirements

Due to the highly technical requirements for HIPAA compliance and the numerous administrative and clinical functions and processes involved, guidance from experts who are knowledgeable about systems design and use to secure private data is necessary. In health care organizations, this will require individuals who are knowledgeable about clinical processes and those who understand health information technology, security, and privacy to work together to establish an entity's compliance plans and revise operations and practices accordingly. As a precondition of designing such systems, it is essential that covered entities understand the HIPAA's statutory requirements and timeline for compliance. An organization's success in preparing for HIPAA will depend upon an active program of assessment, planning, and implementation. Compliance with security and privacy standards can be expected to increase costs initially. However, greater use of EDI is expected to reduce costs and enhance revenues in the long run if processes and systems are improved. NOTE: Special protection for psychotherapy notes holds them to a higher standard of protection. Notes used only by a psychotherapist are not intended to be shared with anyone and are not considered part of the medical record.     

Planning to cheat: EU fiscal policy in real time

Using real-time data from Europe's Stability and Convergence Programs, we explore how fiscal plans and their implementation in the EU are determined. We find that (1) implemented budgetary adjustment falls systematically short of planned adjustment and this shortfall increases with the projection horizon, (2) variability in the eventual fiscal outcomes is dominated by the implementation errors, (3) there is a limited role for 'traditional' political variables, (4) stock-flow adjustments are more important when plans are more ambitious, and (5), most importantly, both the ambition in fiscal plans and their implementation benefit from stronger national fiscal institutions. We emphasize also the importance of credible plans for the eventual fiscal outcomes .
--- Roel Beetsma, Massimo Giuliodori and Peter Wierts     

Political competition in a model of economic growth: Some theoretical results

Summary We analyze the role of political competition on the type of economic policies that are selected in a one sector model of economic growth. We identify conditions under which neoclassical optimal growth plans occur, and conditions in which political business cycles occur. We find that the ability commit to multiperiod economic policy leads to less political stability of economic plans.Support for this research was provided in part by NSF grant #SES-9022932 to the California Institute of Technology. We are grateful to a referee for pointing out that our results could be extended to supra majority rules, as in Proposition 1.     

西部大开发:重点、进展、政策与创新

实施西部大开发战略，关系全国发展的大局，关系民族团结和边疆稳定。西部大开发的政策适用范围，包括12个省、自治区、直辖市，3个少数民族自治州比照有关政策措施予以照顾。西部大开发有四项重点任务，选定了重点区域，实行重点开发。3年来西部大开发有了一个良好开端。国家实行重点支持西部大开发的政策措施，并已出台政策措施与规划。我国加入WTO和党的十六大召开，西部大开发还需要理论和政策创新，笔者尝试着提出了四点创新的思路。     

阿马蒂亚•森的" 能力方法" 在发展经济学中的应用

1998年诺贝尔经济学奖获得者阿马蒂亚•森首先创立了" 能力方法" 的分析框架,并把发展定义为人类能力的扩展和自由的增进。森的" 能力方法" 对联合国的人类发展报告产生了重大影响。在森的基础上," 能力方法" 得到了一定程度的拓展。森的" 能力方法" 对我国发展计划和政策的制定具有一定的借鉴意义。