| Index to All Months
Return to Current Month _______________________________________________
As a research site, EBRI Online maintains old listings in the
"What’s New" page, even though some of the older links may no longer
function. If you reach a bad link, go back to the main site by deleting everything after
".com" or ".org" or ".net" in the address. Since we maintain www.ebri.org as a research and education resource,
and not current news, we hope you will understand our policy and the use for which it is
maintained.
What's new at EBRI this month:
EBRI Testifies on Social Security: EBRI
President Dallas Salisbury testified April 11 before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee
on Social Security, at a hearing on efforts to inform the public about Social Security.
During his testimony, Salisbury touched on EBRI surveys of public opinion and public
knowledge gaps about Social Security and possible enhancements to information regarding
individual Social Security statements.
EBRI President's 1st
Quarter 2000 Report
The EBRI Issue Brief
and EBRI Notes for the month of
April are available online for ordering. The April Issue Brief is entitled
"Employer-Sponsored Long-Term Care
Insurance: Best Practices for Increasing Sponsorship." "The April Notes
articles are "The Future of Private
Retirement Plans" and "Understanding the Income of the Older Population."
National Partners for Financial Empowerment: Treasury Secretary
Lawrence Summers has announced the formation of a new coalition called National Partners
for Financial Empowerment to promote saving. Participants will include the American
Savings Education Council, the Consumer Federation of America, Chase Manhattan Bank, Bank
of America, and Fidelity Investments.
Small Employer Retirement Survey (SERS):
The 2000 Results of the
survey are available.
Savings Game Special: On Wednesday April 5, 2000, WJLA-TV Channel 7
will air the third "Savings Game" Choose
to Save® special from 9 pm - 10 pm in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. The
special offers various tips on retirement preparedness, educational resources, and a
special surprise for our viewers.
EBRI-ERF Policy Forum: The next EBRI-ERF policy forum, "The
Economic Costs of the Uninsured: Implications for Business and Government" will be
held on May 3, 2000, in Washington, DC. Click here for the agenda and links
to background materials, as they become available.
_______________________________________________
What's new in employee benefits:
- HR
News Online -- a daily update from the Society for Human Resource Management
- The following items have been added to the General Accounting Office's Web site in
Portable Document (PDF) format:
If a title link above no longer works, click
here for the GAO Index of Reports and Testimony, FY99, and search for the report by
entering words or phrases from the title. Reports will also be added to GAO's
searchable WAIS database in ASCII and PDF formats within 24 hours of the original
posting. Any individual report may be retrieved directly in text and PDF formats with the
following URL: http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?RPTNO replacing RPTNO with the report
number (e.g., GAO/OCG-98-1).
If your computer does not already have the free Adobe Acrobat viewer
software to read PDF files, click
here for the one-time download necessary to read PDF publications.
_______________________________________________
(4/27/00) Click
here for the Consumer Federation of America/DirectAdvice.com Retirement Savings
Campaign. The page will provide links to the news release, the economic analysis titled: Retirement
Savings of Ameican Households: Asset Levels and Adequacy, and an opinion survey.
(4/27/00) "The
National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) recently released for comment a number
of proposed modifications to its accreditation program that will encourage health plans to
focus on reducing medical errors and improving patient safety."
(4/27/00) A March 2000 study, Global Aging: The Challenge of the New Millennium,
by Watson Wyatt Worldwide done in partnership with the Center for Strategic and
International Studies for the Commission on Global Aging, places special emphasis on the
challenges facing Japan, Europe and the United States. The
press release provides a link to the study.
(4/27/00) President
Clinton released April 26 a new Families USA study documenting prescription drug price
increases: Still
Rising: Drug Price Increases for Seniors, 1999--2000.
(4/26/00) A new study from the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC), based on
two surveys from 1996--97 and 1998--99, finds that the uninsurance rate for low-income
parents increased from 31 to 35 percent during this time period and that coverage for
children has not changed. The study – Recent
Trends in Children’s Health Coverage is HSC Issue
Brief #29.
(4/25/00) FAAR.org,
the website on financial aspects of aging research, features research studies concerning
monetary issues related to aging that individuals face as they approach and enter their
retirement years.
(4/25/00) Demographic
Research is a "free, expedited, peer-reviewed journal of the population
sciences" published by the Max
Planck Institute for Demographic Research of Rostock, Germany.
(4/25/00) Click
here to read about a study by The National Council on the Aging (NCOA), The
International Longevity Center (ILC), and The Jewish Home and Hospital on attitudes about
old age and aging.
(4/25/00) The April 2000 Public
Policy Update: Longevity and Aging: The View from Government is posted by the
International Longevity Center (ILC).
(4/24/00) Money.com presents "Guide
to the Top 20 401(k) Funds."
(4/24/00) The National Center for Policy Analysis Idea House site provides a Social
Security Calculator to determine Social Security benefits at retirement.
(4/24/00) A
hearing on protecting pension assets was held April 13, 2000, by the Senate Committee
on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions regarding H.R.833, the Bankruptcy Reform Act of
2000.
(4/21/00) The Kaiser Family Foundation has released Pending
Patient Protection Legislation: A Comparative Analysis of Key Provisions of the House and
Senate Versions of H.R. 2990, which was prepared by Phyllis Borzi and Sara
Rosenbaum of the Center for Health Services Research and Policy, The George Washington
University Medical Center.
(4/21/00) The Health Insurance Association of America recently released a survey report
entitled Long-Term
Care Insurance In 1997-1998.
(4/21/00) The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently released Would
Raising IRA Contribution Limits Bolster Retirement Security For Lower- and Middle-Income
Families or Is There a Better Way? by Peter Orszag and Jonathan Orszag.
(4/21/00) The Association of Private Pension and Welfare Plans released Looking
to the Future: A New Perspective on the Social Security Problem on April 7.
(4/21/00) The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has posted Assuring
Retirement Income For All Workers by Daniel I. Halperin and Alicia H. Munnell.
(4/21/00) The Association of Private Pension and Welfare Plans provides the full text
of debate and the legislative history for the Worker
Economic Opportunity Act (S. 2323) which would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of
1938 to clarify the treatment of stock options under the Act.
(4/18/00) The following documents have been added to the Congressional Budget Office
WWW site:
(4/18/00) Designing
a Targeted Drug Benefit for America's Seniors by Jim Frogue is an April 17, 2000,
report from The Heritage Foundation.
(4/17/00) The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland has released a March 2000 working paper
titled How
Much Should Americans Be Saving for Retirement? by B. Douglas Bernheim, Lorenzo
Forni, Jagadeesh Gokhale, and Laurence J. Kotlikoff.
(4/17/00) The
Distributional Effects of Social Security Reform, Martin Feldstein and Jeffrey
Liebman, editors, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press. The National Bureau
of Economic Research has posted papers from the conference held October 21-23, 1999, which
are preliminary drafts unless otherwise noted, which will become chapters in the
conference volume.
(4/17/00) The
U.S. Supreme Court debuts on the Internet this week providing Web access to its
decisions, argument calendars, and other information.
(4/14/00) "The
Real Consumer Revolution in Healthcare: Defined-Contribution Health Plans" is
from Booz·Allen & Hamilton's Insights series.
(4/14/00) BenefitsLink has compiled a
set of topical links on cash balance pension plans.
(4/14/00) The Alpha Center's ERISA
Preemption Primer provides an overview of ERISA preemption principles relevant to
state health policy.
(4/13/00) Commitment in the Workplace: The 1999 Employee Relationship Report
Benchmark Study released October 1999, is from the
Hudson Institute and Walker Information.
(4/13/00) Hewitt Associates provides the following analysis: U.S.
Presidential Candidates -- Legislative Positions on HR Issues.
(4/12/00) The Benton Foundation has recently released Networking
for Better Care: Health Care in the Information Age, written by Christopher Conte
and edited by Jean Smith.
(4/11/00) Forbes has posted the results of a new survey on company benefits.
Details on many of the Forbes 500s companies' investment/pension plan, health and
life insurance, family, and other benefit offerings are available. Click
here for The Forbes 500s: Benefits and Recruitment.
(4/11/00) President
Clinton released April 10, 2000, a new prescription drug coverage and pricing study. Click
here for the full study: Prescription Drug Coverage, Spending, Utilization, and
Prices from the Department of Health & Human Services.
(4/10/00) On April 7th, President Clinton unveiled a new electronic Social Security
service--an online retirement planner--to help Americans better prepare for their
financial future. The online retirement planner will let individuals compute estimates of
their future Social Security retirement benefits online. It also provides important
information on factors affecting retirement benefits, such as military service, household
earnings and federal employment. "Whether you're 25, 35, 45 or 55, it's never too
early to plan for your future retirement," said Social Security Commissioner Kenneth
S. Apfel. The
Social Security Retirement Planner will help workers understand how much they'll get
from Social Security when they retire.
(4/10/00) Click
here to read the April 7, 2000, remarks by the President at the bill signing for the
Senior Citizens Freedom to Work Act of 2000 at the White House.
(4/7/00) In Retiring
Retirement "Ken Dychtenwald and Greta Mart ponder a world where people
continue to work far beyond age 65."
(4/7/00) The Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy measured 12th graders'
level of knowledge of personal finance basics:
(4/7/00) The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) released its 1999
Annual Report. Click
here for the press release.
(4/7/00) The
Corporate Outlook Survey is conducted quarterly by Financial Executives Institute
(FEI) and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Each survey polls a
cross-section of CFOs from more than 4,000 U.S. companies.
(4/7/00) "A new survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)
suggests that employers are being more cautious about the number of benefits they offer.
The SHRM®
2000 Benefits Survey shows overall decreases from the previous year's survey in
the number of employers who offer such benefits as relocation assistance, health wellness
programs, subsidized cafeterias and certain types of leave."
(4/6/00) McGinn Actuaries Ltd. has posted a discussion involving cash balance plans: Calling
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: Who Added That Sentence, and Why?
(4/6/00) Status
of the Social Security and Medicare Programs by the Social Security and Medicare
Boards of Trustees provides a summary of the 2000 annual reports.
(4/5/00) The Dallas Morning News started April 2 a series of articles on "America's
Health Insurance Crisis."
(4/5/00) "Employee,
Cover Thyself" by Shari Caudron on the Workforce Online Web site briefly
addresses the defined contribution plan solution to the problem of rising health-care
costs.
(4/5/00) Workforce Online presents HR
Strategy Development: Results of a Survey from "The Globalization of Human
Resources" -- an Arthur Andersen survey of 76 globalizing companies.
(4/4/00) The Heritage Foundation released today an Executive Memorandum titled: Social
Security's Trustees' Report Shows Bigger Long-Run Deficit by Daniel J. Mitchell.
(4/4/00) Click
here for the April 3, 2000, testimony of Wilma K. Schopp on Phased Retirement Programs
given on behalf of the Association of Private Pension and Welfare Plans (APPWP) before the
Senate Special Committee on Aging.
(4/4/00) Citizens Against Government Waste released on March 31, 2000, a special report
entitled A
Better Prescription for Seniors, which proposes an alternative to the Clinton
administration’s prescription drug proposal.
(4/4/00) The Congressional Budget Office released March 28 cost estimates of the
following legislation:
- H.R.
3573, Keep Our Promise to America's Military Retirees Act as introduced on Feb. 2,
2000
- H.R.
2966, Keep Our Promise to America's Military Retirees Act as introduced on Sept. 28,
1999.
(4/4/00) AARP reseach has produced Pension and IRA Coverage Among Boomer,
Pre-Boomer, and Older Workers. Click
here for the executive summary.
(4/3/00) The Congressional Budget Office released March 30 An
Analysis of the President's Budgetary Proposals for Fiscal Year 2001.
(4/3/00) Click
here for "Health Care Is Back," from Blueprint: Ideas for a New Century,
Spring 2000, which provides a link to the results of a poll conducted for the Democratic
Leadership Council in December 1999.
(4/3/00) Ceridian Employer Services’ Work
Perks Survey Results, revealing the use of "perks" as a means of
attracting and retaining employees, is posted on their site.
(4/3/00) Workforce Online presents "HR
That Really Works: 2000 Workforce Optimas Awards" with all the articles on
the winning companies from the Workforce March 2000, issue.
(4/3/00) Employee
Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA): An Evaluation after 25 Years is an
Educational White Paper dated October 14, 1999, prepared by Leonardo Canseco, David
Bixler, and Theresa Markley, of the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards.
(4/3/00) A legislative
update chart of federal issues is provided by the National Council on Teacher
Retirement.
____________________________________________________________________
|
