American Benefits Podcast

Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), and the high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) associated with them, still constitute a minority share of all employer-provided health offerings in the United States. But they probably also represent the most fertile area of employer innovations to reduce cost and improve health care value. That is why the American Benefits Council included in DESTINATION 2030, its long-term public policy strategic plan, one of its 20 goals ("Preserve access to defined contribution health programs and enhance consumer-directed health plans") and an entire section of policy recommendations (Section N) devoted to consumer-directed health. On this episode of the podcast, Katy Spangler, the Council's senior advisor, health policy, "nerds out" with host Jason Hammersla about the past, present and future of HSA policy.  

On Wednesday, February 12, the American Benefits Council released its long-term public policy strategic plan, DESTINATION 2030: A Roadmap for the Future of Employee Benefits. In this episode, host Jason Hammersla speaks with Strategic Plan Task Force Chair Tami Simon about the plan's development and ultimate framework for advancing holistic well-being.

Fred Thiele, vice president, global benefits and mobility for Microsoft, will serve as chair of the American Benefits Council's Board of Directors for the 2023-2024 term. In this episode, he speaks with host Jason Hammersla about his company's unique approach to benefits, outlines his priorities for the next year and drops a few tales of questionable reimbursement requests.

Diversity, equity and inclusion is a priority for many of the American Benefits Council's member companies, who have in turn directed us to engage with these issues as they relate to employee benefits.  Over the previous 12 months, the Council has established a task force to address social determinants of health and joined with a number of other esteemed organizations to release the research report, Collection of Race and Ethnicity Data for Use by Health Plans to Advance Health Equity. The project was a collaboration with Urban Institute and Deloitte's Health Equity Institute, as funded by Elevance Health. In this podcast episode, Jennifer Haley, senior research associate in the Urban Institute's Health Policy Center, talks to host Jason Hammersla about the recent collaborative study examining the collection and sharing of race and ethnicity data and how that data might be used by health plans to advance health equity.

If the American Benefits Council is to be a leader in the employee benefits world, we must have strong internal leadership. The Council's policy agenda is carefully considered and set by our Policy Board of Directors, made up of knowledgeable and dedicated human resource and benefits professionals at each of our most engaged member companies. Holding the gavel at the head of that table is this episode's special guest. Speaking to host Jason Hammersla is Tracy Watts, senior partner in Mercer's Washington D.C. office and the company's National Leader for U.S. Health Care Reform. As one of the nation's foremost experts on the intersection of health policy and business strategy, Tracy speaks with Jason about the latest in employer innovation, the importance of the Council's advocacy and her vision for the organization's future.

For many multinational companies, figuring out how to scale employee benefits for a global population is a critical element of their economic competitiveness. But if providing comprehensive employee benefit programs in the United States is like playing advanced chess, doing so on a global basis is like playing advanced chess on a moving speedboat. The American Benefits Council's policy team is not only engaged with the whole wide world at the "big-picture" level, it is also focused on practical matters for global employee benefit plan sponsors like governance, employee mobility, mergers and acquisitions and more. Guiding members and staff across those choppy waters is Lynn Dudley, our senior vice president, global retirement and compensation policy, and Mike Mullins, chair of the Council's Global Benefits Committee. In this episode, host Jason Hammersla talks to Lynn and Mike about how global benefits differ from domestic programs and what major challenges global companies face today.

Even as policymakers discuss and debate the so-called "retirement savings gap," employers and others are starting to take part in a newly-minted coverage expansion tool: the SECURE Act of 2019 birthed the inception of the Pooled Employer Plan (PEP), which allows separate companies employers to team up and share plan administration for their collective employees. On this episode of the American Benefits Podcast, host Jason Hammersla is joined by Rick Jones, senior partner in Aon's National Retirement Practices group. Together they discuss the state of employer plan sponsorship, barriers to plan formation and how PEPs might improve the environment for plan sponsors.

Paid leave may not be an "employee benefit," strictly speaking, in the same way that health coverage and retirement coverage are. But providing it has become a significant pressure point for employers, especially as an increasing number of states and localities have erected their own mandates over the last decade. In this episode, host Jason Hammersla talks about this slow-motion explosion of paid leave mandates with one of the nation's foremost legal authorities on the subject: Josh Seidman, a partner in the Labor and Employment department of Seyfarth Shaw, LLP. Together, Jason and Josh talk about the history of state and municipal paid leave statutes, how to think about them in their present form, and what the future holds. We also, somehow, touch on a couple of classic cinematic comedies.  View Josh's bio here: https://www.seyfarth.com/people/joshua-d-seidman.html Council members can access the State Paid Leave Atlas here: https://www.americanbenefitscouncil.org/atlas

The 2020 enactment of legislation to eliminate "surprise" medical billing was not just the most significant health care coverage legislation since the Affordable Care Act. It was also the culmination of a remarkable show of (relatively) swift and bipartisan lawmaking.  Since that enactment, however, the story has taken dizzying twists and turns, with more to come as the regulatory implementation phase gives way to nationwide litigation over the Biden administration's rules. In this episode, host Jason Hammersla speaks to Katie Keith, a member of the research faculty for the Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms, and who has been following the surprise billing saga closely as a contributor to the Health Affairs blog. Keith puts the 2020 law in context, explains how regulatory agencies have sought to implement the law and breaks down the six different lawsuits scattered throughout the country. You can find Katie Keith's writing on Health Affairs' Following The ACA Forefront article series and the recently launched Health Reform newsletter. You can also find her recent article on the surprise billing litigation at The Commonwealth Fund.