Employee benefit rules: Gifts that keep on giving

As you look back on 2023 and ahead to 2024, there are so many compliance-related items to consider relating to your employee benefit plans. The rules you’re supposed to comply with keep growing and growing—they seem like the gifts that keep on giving (and changing). Here are some of the key items to consider at this time.

Health plans

Gag-clause attestations were due December 31, 2023. Self-funded group health plans are now prohibited from entering into an agreement with a healthcare provider, network, third-party administrator, or other service provider offering access to a network of providers that would directly or indirectly restrict a plan from providing provider-specific cost or quality of care information or data through a consumer engagement tool or any other means to:

• Referring providers;
• The plan sponsor;
• Participants;
• Beneficiaries;
• Enrollees; or
• Individuals eligible to become participants, beneficiaries, or enrollees of the plan.

Additionally, there are other related requirements. Plans must now annually submit an attestation of compliance with these requirements to the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Treasury. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is collecting these on behalf of the departments. The first gag-clause attestation was due December 31, 2023.