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"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:
Facts from EBRI:
Domestic Partner Benefits: Facts and Background (Updated June 2000) is a recent
fact sheet from the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
The Uninsured in Southwest
Border States: The June 2000 EBRI Fact Sheet answers questions on the
percentage of the population without health insurance in the Southwest border states,
relative to the nation, and Hispanics who lack health insurance.
Value
of Benefits Survey: "Most workers are generally satisfied with their
employment-based benefits and continue to rank health care as the most important of their
employee benefits, according to the findings of the 2000 Value of Benefits Survey
conducted by WorldatWork in collaboration with the Employee Benefit Research Institute
(EBRI)."
2000 Retirement Confidence
Survey and Minority RCS: Results of the 2000 Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS)
and the 2000 Minority RCS were released on May 16, 2000, at an event at the National Press
Club in Washington, DC.
Evaluating the Archer-Shaw Social Security Proposal: Using the
EBRI-SSASIM2 Policy Simulation Model, the June EBRI Notes article closely
examines the Archer-Shaw 1999 proposal, which incoprates the key concept of individual
accounts that Gov. Bush has endorsed.
The EBRI Issue Brief
and EBRI Notes for the month of
June 2000 are available online for ordering. The June Issue Brief is
entitled "Retirement Confidence Survey
2000: Including Results from the RCS Minority Survey and the Small Employer Retirement
Survey." The June Notes
articles are "Evaluating the Archer-Shaw Social Security Proposal" and
"Value of Benefits Constant in a Changing Job Environment: The 1999 WorldatWork/EBRI
Value of Benefits Survey."
Small Employer Retirement Survey (SERS):
The 2000 Results of the
survey are available.
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What's new in employee benefits:
- HR
News Online -- a daily update from the Society for Human Resource Management
- The following item has 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.
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(6/29/00 The Center for Economic and Policy Research has posted Governor
Bush's Individual Account Proposal: A Reassessment Using Realistic Stock Return
Projections.
(6/29/00) ERISA
at 50: A New Model for the Private Pension System by Pamela Perun and C. Eugene
Steuerle of the Urban Institute is a February 2000, paper done for the Retirement Project.
(6/29/00) Insure.com provides the Health
Insurance Laws and Benefits Tool which allows searching for each state's mandated
health benefits and other consumer information.
(6/29/00) The
National Health Care Purchasing Institute (NHCPI) "is an initiative of The Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation to advance health care purchasing by Fortune 500 companies, the
Health Care Financing Administration, purchasing alliances, and public employee
purchasers."
(6/28/00) H.R.4747,
sponsored by Rep John A. Boehner and introduced 6/26/2000, is titled: To Amend Title I of
the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and the Internal Revenue Code of 1986
to Promote the Provision of Retirement Investment Advice to Workers Managing Their
Retirement Income Assets.
(6/28/00) Economic
concerns and health care are among the top concerns of Americans as shown by surveys
conducted by The Gallup Organization March through May 2000.
(6/28/00) Click
here for audio Webcasts of the June 7-9, 2000, conference, Saving,
Intergenerational Transfers, and the Distribution of Wealth, organized by Edward N.
Wolff of the Levy Institute and New York University.
(6/27/00) Intellectual Capital.com presents Gore
vs. Bush on Retirement Security by Michael Calabrese.
(6/27/00) "Quantitative
Measures for Evaluating Social Security Reform Proposals" is a Spring 2000 Issue
Brief from the American Academy of Actuaries. "The
Bottom Line on Comparing Social Security Reform Proposals" is additional
information.
(6/27/00) The Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress has released two studies:
(6/27/00) The
World Health Report 2000: Health Systems: Improving Performance, this year's
annual report from the World Health Organization (WHO), represents "the first ever
analysis of the world's health systems."
(6/27/00) The Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA) has posted the State
Health Insurance Mid-Year Report. Click
here to read the executive summary, the full report, or the Powerpoint presentation
for the June 22 press briefing.
(6/26/00) A report from the 1997 Census of Governments is now available in PDF format: Employee-Retirement
Systems of State and Local Governments "provides statistics on the financial
transactions and characteristics of state and local government retirement systems. Data
are presented on the revenues, benefit payments, cash and security holdings, and
membership of these employee retirement systems. Data are aggregated by state and level of
government."
(6/22/00) The Employee Benefit Research Institute is one of the 100
Best Research Sources compiled by the staff of American Demographics.
(6/19/00) The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland published the following two short
articles in the June 2000 issue of Economic Trends:
(6/16/00) Internet
and Your Health, a New York Times special advertising supplement provided by Merck
is a comprehensive source of health and health care information and resources online.
(6/16/00) The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Chronic
Care in America: A 21st Century Challenge provides estimated annual direct medical
costs for persons with chronic conditions under chronic care disease management programs.
(6/15/00) BenefitFinder.com
has made available the most recent Annual Report Form 5500 filings which can be searched
for a fee.
(6/15/00) The Kaiser Family Foundation National
Survey of Consumer Experiences with Health Plans is "a national survey of
2,500 insured adult Americans on their experiences with health plans...."
(6/15/00) The Center for Studying Health System Change released on June 6, 2000, the
findings from a survey entitled "Why
People Change Their Health Care Providers."
(6/12/00) The Gallup Organization released today the results of a poll entitled
"Americans Favor Social Security Investment Proposal," indicating that a
majority of Americans prefer the personal retirement accounts recently proposed by George
W. Bush. Click
here for the press release.
(6/8/00) CNNfn.com announces "Carmakers
expand benefits: GM, Ford, Chrysler to offer health care benefits to workers' same-sex
partners."
(6/8/00) Free for a limited time from William M. Mercer, Inc. -- the use of their Geographic
Salary Differential Calculator -- giving you the ability to compare city pay rates
(base city) to the national average as well as to other cities (target city).
(6/7/00) The National Alliance for Fair Employment has released a report titled Contingent
Workers Fight for Fairness.
(6/6/00) The Investment Company Institute today posted the Spring 2000 report 401(k)
Plan Participants: Characteristics, Contributions, and Account Activity.
(6/6/00) The Senate Special Committee on Aging held a hearing on June 5, 2000, entitled
The Cash Balance Conundrum: How to Promote Pensions Without Harming Participants. Click
here for links to the testimonies.
(6/6/00) Governor
Bush's Individual Account Proposal: Implications for Retirement Benefits is a
report from The Century Foundation's issue brief series on the Social Security Network.
The authors are Henry J. Aaron, Alan S. Blinder, Alicia H. Munnell, and Peter R. Orszag.
(6/6/00) Mutual fund retirement assets, 1990-1999, are shown in "Mutual
Funds and the Retirement Market" (Fundamentals, Vol. 9, No. 2) on the
website of the Investment Company Institute.
(6/6/00) Click
here to read A Framework for Analyzing and Managing Retirement Risks by
Olivia S. Mitchell and Zvi Bodie from the Pension Research Council working paper series.
(working papers available only temporarily)
(6/6/00) A preliminary compilation as of April 1, 2000, of International
Resources: Organizations and Institutes Interested in the Study of Work-Family Issues
has been prepared by The
Sloan Work-Family Researchers Electronic Network.
(6/6/00) The International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans has posted the report: Substance
Abuse Services for Multiemployer Fund Participants.
(6/5/00) According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer
Price Index for All Urban Consumers increased 0.1 percent in April 2000. For the
12-month period ended in April, the CPI-U increased 3.0 percent.
(6/5/00) The
Budgetary Treatment of Personal Retirement Accounts, March 2000, is a
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) paper prepared as part of CBO's continuing analyses of
federal budget concepts and Social Security reform proposals.
(6/1/00) "Cashing Out Your Future? Hewitt Study Shows Majority of 401(k) Plan
Participants in the U.S. Opt for Cash When Changing Jobs, Regardless of Age" heads the
May 30, 2000, press release from Hewitt Associates. The Hewitt 401(k) Rollover
Distribution Analysis has one
chart linked to the press release.
(6/1/00) A
May 9, 2000, press release from Hewitt Associates says that the Hewitt 401(k)
Index™ Shows Normal Transfer Activity Among Employees, Despite Market Volatility.
(6/1/00) The lead in a May 26, 2000, Watson Wyatt Worldwide press
release reads "In an effort to help ease the growing administrative burden facing
human resource departments, many employers are expecting to make greater use of the
Internet to administer benefits, while offering their workers fewer health plans,
according to a survey of 503 employers." The findings are part of the Fifth
Annual Survey on Purchasing Value in Health Care, conducted jointly by Watson
Wyatt Worldwide, the Washington Business Group on Health (WBGH), and the Healthcare
Financial Management Association (HFMA).
(6/1/00) "RxHealthValue, a new independent information center released May 10,
2000, a
national study of prescription drug use that found that Americans are using more
prescriptions, at younger ages and for more conditions, and are substituting newer, more
expensive medications for established products. As a result, in the population studied,
pharmaceutical spending increased by 24.8 percent annually between 1996 and 1999."
(6/1/00) For coverage of the 2000 presidential race go to Gallup's
Election 2000 page.
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