Healthcare Compliance Inc

Monday, 10 December 2018

Spot Audit On Previous ACA Filings | Annual Tradition Continues – 2018 Employee Statement Deadline Extended along with Good Faith Effort Standard

On November 29, 2018 the IRS provided every employer an automatic extension from the deadline to furnish the Form 1095-C statements to individuals. Additionally, the IRS extended the good faith efforts standard to the 2018 Forms. Both of these items are beneficial to employers but also will make the IRS less forgiving of late filers. Notice 2018-94 provides transition relief by extending the due date for the Form 1095-C statements that were to be furnished to individuals by January 31, 2019 to March 4, 2019. Importantly, the permissive extension discussed in the instructions to the Form 1095-C no longer applies to the individual statement deadline. Therefore, the March 4, 2019 deadline for furnishing the Form 1095-C statements is now a hard deadline. The Notice states the Service will not even respond to employers requesting an extension beyond the March 4, 2019 deadline.

Similar to last year, Notice 2018-94 does not provide an extension for the Forms 1094-C and 1095-C which are to be provided to the IRS. The deadline to file the Forms 1094-C and 1095-C with the IRS is February 28, 2019 if the employer is filing on paper. If an employer is filing electronically, the deadline is April 1, 2019. An employer can still complete a Form 8809 to receive an automatic 30 day extension.

Questions? info@healthcare-compliance-inc.com 800-325-1333

Notice 2018-94 also extends the good faith efforts standard to the 2018 Forms so long as an employer complies with the new deadline for furnishing the statement to individuals and the old deadline for filing the Forms 1094-C and 1095-C with the IRS. The transition relief discussed in Notice 2018-94 only applies to the 2018 Forms.

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About the author – Ryan Moulder serves as General Counsel at Accord Systems, LLC, provides Legal Counsel to Healthcare Compliance Inc. and is a Partner at Health Care Attorney’s P.C. Ryan received his LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center and his J.D. from Saint Louis University School of Law. He has distinguished himself as a leader in the Affordable Care Act arena and has written and spoken on a variety of ACA topics as it relates to compliance for companies.

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Wednesday, 21 November 2018

ACA Penalty Reduction Service | IRS Letter 226J Could Propose Millions of Dollars in ACA Penalties

Why should your organization care about IRS Letter 226J? Well, it could propose millions of dollars in ACA penalties against your organization.

The Letter 226J notices are being sent to certain larger employers the IRS believes have failed to comply with the requirements of the Employer Mandate under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for the 2015 tax year. To date, the IRS has issued more than 30,000 of these notices proposing penalty assessments of over $4.4 billion. A report from the Congressional Budget Office has stated these penalty assessments could total up to $12 billion in 2018.

Under the Employer Mandate, Applicable Large Employers (ALEs), organizations with 50 or more full-time employees and full-time equivalent employees, are required to offer minimum essential coverage to at least 95% of their full-time workforce (and their dependents) whereby such coverage meets minimum value and is affordable for the employee or be subject to IRS 4980H penalties.

Monday, 15 October 2018

ACA Compliance Packages | Alex Azar Says Premiums To Drop For Affordable Care Act Plan

WASHINGTON — Premiums for a popular type of “silver” health plan under the Affordable Care Act will edge downward next year in most states, the Trump administration’s health chief announced Thursday.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said premiums for a so-called “benchmark” silver plan will drop by 2 percent in the 39 states served by the federal HealthCare.gov website.

The number of marketplace insurers will grow for the first time since 2015, he added.

Azar’s numbers were in line with a broader independent analysis earlier this month by Avalere Health and The Associated Press, which found premiums and markets stabilizing nationwide. But his claim that the Trump administration deserves credit for “Obamacare’s” turnabout was quickly challenged.

Friday, 5 October 2018

ACA Employer Reporting | Obamacare About to Become More Affordable For Many People

(CNN)It will likely cost a little less to buy the benchmark Obamacare plan next year. The rate could drop for the first time since the Affordable Care Act exchanges opened in 2014.

The premium for the benchmark silver policy on the federal exchange is expected to decline by 2% for 2019, Health Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday.

The predicted decline for next year comes after a 37% spike for this year’s benchmark silver plan, upon which premium subsidies are based.

The number of insurers on the federal exchange also will grow for the first time since 2015, Azar said. Over the past two years, 44% of carriers have dropped out of the program.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which administers Obamacare, typically releases a more detailed look at the upcoming year’s premiums and insurer participation in late October. Open enrollment begins November 1 and runs through December 15 in most states.

Wednesday, 26 September 2018

ACA Reporting Service | Affordable Care Act Under Fire Again In Federal Court

The long-disputed fate of the Affordable Care Act played out anew in a Fort Worth courtroom Wednesday as a score of Republican-led states sought to persuade a federal judge to halt the sprawling health-care law.

In the latest legal threat to the 2010 law, the coalition of GOP attorney’s general and a pair of governors argued that a recent change in federal tax policy has made the ACA unconstitutional. For the short-term, they asked a federal judge to grant a preliminary injunction that would suspend the law while the rest of the case unfolds — a possibility that could throw significant aspects of the U.S. health-care system into chaos.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, a conservative jurist appointed by President George W. Bush, did not immediately rule on the request or indicate when he would do so. He asked more frequent and pointed questions of the parties arguing in favor of the ACA, while asking the opponents mainly about the impact of a preliminary injunction or an outright ruling against the law.

Monday, 13 August 2018

Full Service ACA Reporting | Trump Administration Proposes Further Dismantling Of Affordable Care Act Through Medicare

The Trump administration is proposing to restrict an innovation in the Affordable Care Act that was intended to improve Medicare and slow spending in the vast federal insurance system for older Americans. Health-care researchers have hailed the model’s promise to improve quality and efficiency, but government data suggest it is not saving enough money.

The changes, announced Thursday by the administrator of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, would significantly curtail Accountable Care Organizations. The ACOs can be teams of doctors, hospitals or other providers who become responsible for all the health-care needs of a specific group of patients.

Under the ACA, these teams have choices about their financial arrangements with the government. They can either collect bonuses if they provide better care at lower cost than the regular Medicare program, or they can collect greater amounts if they also are willing to accept the risk of owing money in case they end up overspending.

Wednesday, 25 July 2018

ACA Reporting Services | Trump Officials Slash Grants That Help Consumers Get Obamacare

The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it was slashing grants to nonprofit organizations that help people obtain health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, the latest step in an escalating attack on the law that threatens to destabilize its insurance markets.

The cuts are the second round in two years. The government will provide $10 million this fall, down from $36 million last autumn and $63 million in late 2016 — a total reduction of more than 80 percent.

Trump administration officials said the insurance counselors, known as navigators, did not enroll enough people to justify more spending. Insurance agents and brokers do much better, they said.