Summary of Benefits and Coverage: What You Have to Hand Out, and When
Four pages. Twelve-point font. Five separate delivery deadlines, and a penalty clock that starts running the day you miss one. The Summary of Benefits and Coverage is the smallest document in your benefits file and the one most likely to create a compliance problem you never see coming. Every employer that sponsors a group health […]
How to Build a Health Plan Fiduciary Committee (and What It Should Actually Do)
A health plan fiduciary committee is the single most underused governance tool available to employers right now. Most companies have one for their 401(k). Almost none have one for the benefit that costs them far more money and touches far more lives. Think about how your organization makes other decisions. You have a budget process. […]
The Benefits Dirty Dozen Part 2: Health & Welfare Plan Practices – Tactics or Tricks, Dirty or Dumb?
Most broker compensation is disclosed. That is the part employers find hardest to believe once they go looking, because the number that explains a decade of renewal increases was usually sitting in a document they already received. The practices below are not fraud. They are standard industry arrangements that have drifted, and the drift almost […]
The Year-End Group Health Plan Compliance Checklist for Plan Sponsors
Every other part of your business runs on a plan. Sales has a forecast. Finance has a close calendar. Operations has a cadence. Then December arrives, and group health plan compliance turns into a scramble of last-minute attestations, notices nobody drafted, and filings that somebody assumed the carrier was handling. That scramble is not a […]
2027 Maternity Billing Changes: Essential Employer Guide
How itemized maternity codes could reshape your renewal, your budget, and your claims exposure When maternity billing changes, your health costs change with it, and employers are usually the last to see it coming. The 2027 maternity billing changes take effect on January 1, 2027, and they rebuild the way pregnancy care gets billed from […]
How to Vet Benefits Vendors: 4 Tests Before You Sign
How to Vet Benefits Vendors: 4 Tests Before You Sign Ethos Benefits | The Business of Benefits, Episode 88 Learning how to vet benefits vendors has quietly become one of the most valuable skills a CFO or HR leader can build. Cost pressure is real, the pitches are getting more creative, and the line between […]
