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What's new at EBRI this month:
EBRI-ERF Policy Forum Materials:
Background materials for the December 1, 1999, EBRI-ERF policy forum are available by clicking here (follow the links from the
agenda).
1999 Women's Retirement Confidence Survey
(WRCS): Results of the 1999 WRCS were released on November 17 during the American
Savings Education Council (ASEC) Partners' meeting. Click here for the press release,
fact sheets, a full report, and charts from the survey.
The EBRI Issue Brief
and EBRI Notes for the month of
November are available online for ordering. The November Issue Brief is entitled
"Public Attitudes on the U.S. Health Care System: Findings from the 1999 Health
Confidence Survey." The October
Notes articles are "Do the Social Security Projections Underestimate Future
Longevity?" and "Both Job-Based Health Coverage and Uninsured Continue to Rise,
CPS Shows."
1999 Health Confidence Survey
(HCS): Press Release Outlines Preliminary EBRI HCS Findings from EBRI 's
Survey Which Examines Americans' Confidence in the Health Care System Click here to go to a page with links to the
Survey Questionnaire, a later press release, and Fact Sheets from the results of the
survey:
- Age Differences
- Confidence in Health Care Today
- Confidence in the Future of Health Care
- Gender Differences
- Health Status Differences
- Medicare
- Satisfaction with Managed Care
- Managed Care Confusion
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What's new in employee benefits:
- HR
News Online -- a daily update from the Society for Human Resource Management
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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(11/29/99) Axia Economics has posted numerous fulltext Online
Resources such as published articles and working papers (mostly British) on
Pensions, Taxation, and Labour Markets.
(11/26/99) Click
here to read Assessing ERISA from a Participants' Perspective -- a guest
article contributed to BenefitsLink by Karen W. Ferguson, Director of the Pension Rights
Center.
(11/26/99) U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, on Nov. 23 at
a panel on health care sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis
Institute of Health Economics, spoke on decisions for health care for low-income
families.
(11/24/99) The November 1999 Life/Health edition of Best's Review includes Project
Tomorrow by Sally Whitney. "Actuaries predict we’ll live longer, spend more
on health care and probably buy more annuities in the new millennium." Links
to related articles are provided from the introductory page:
- Life Insurance Assets Will Grow Faster Than Policies in Force
- More Costly Health Care on the Horizon
- 20/20 Hindsight
- Longer Lives Require More Care
(11/23/99) Matching
Private Saving with Federal Dollars: USA Accounts and Other Subsidies for Saving
by Pamela Perun is number 8 in the series, "The Retirement Project."
(11/22/99) Click
here to read the New York Times article "Bill Expands Health Benefits for
Disabled People Who Work" by Robert Pear.
(11/22/99) The Committee for Economic Development's report, New
Opportunities for Older Workers, "is the first of its kind to combine an
assessment of the economic strains imposed by an aging population with a policy agenda
that would enable more older Americans to remain productively engaged in the
workforce."
(11/22/99) The Social Investment Forum recently released 1999
Trends Report: 1999 Report on Responsible Investing Trends in the United States,
which found that over $2 trillion is invested socially or environmentally.
(11/19/99) A survey finds most employers offer only basic policies to meet needs of
working caregivers, the critically ill, and the bereaved. Released July 14, 1999,
the survey was conducted for the Workplace Task Force of Last Acts, a coalition of more
than 370 organizations dedicated to improving end-of-life care.
(11/19/99) Click
here to read The Cash Balance Plan Conversion: Can We Make Everybody Happy? by
Daniel E. Kirner, Principal, DeFrain Mayer.
(11/17/99) Financing
Long-Term Care in the Twenty-First Century: The Public and Private Roles by Mark
Merlis is available online from The Commonwealth Fund.
(11/15/99) Click
here to read a press release on the findings from a survey on defined benefit and
defined contribution pension plans conducted among member companies of the Committee on
the Investment of Employee Benefit Assets (CIEBA).
(11/15/99) Click
here for the Congressional Budget Office's November 1999, cost estimate of H.R. 65,
Military Retirement Equity Act of 1999, as introduced on January 6, 1999.
(11/15/99) The
Consortium for Research on Employee Benefits is a collective, ongoing database of
employee benefits research. The database consists of submitted research from academics and
other employee benefit researchers, research supported through the International
Foundation of Employee Benefit Plan's Grants for Research Program, synopses of research
published in select employee benefits journals and links to other nonprofit or
governmental employee benefits research. Research placed in the database covers 1990 to
the present.
(11/12/99) "An ambitious Internet venture unveiled Monday in Washington seeks to
provide the voting public with unfettered, "unfiltered" issue-specific messages
from each of [the year] 2000 presidential candidates, as well as from those running for
the House, Senate, and state governor's mansions next November.
FreedomChannel.com,
a comprehensive World Wide Web site launched by the Arlington, Virginia-based Freedom
Forum, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the
Century Foundation, features an archive of 90-second video clips recorded by a number of
presidential candidates speaking on a variety of hot-buttoncampaign issues." Click
here for clips on Social Security reform.
(11/11/99) Click
here for the chart of the Hewitt Annual Health Care Cost Increases: National
Averages from the Hewitt Health Value Initiative. Click
here for the press release.
(11/11/99) Key
Issues Facing the Pharmaceutical and Health Care Products Industry is a report
highlighting findings from the PricewaterhouseCoopers sixth annual survey of the
pharmaceutical and health care products industry.
(11/11/99) The statement of Charles N. Kahn III, president of the Health Insurance
Association of America, on "Substance
Abuse Parity: Promoting Treatment Options" before the Subcommittee on Criminal
Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, House Committee on Government Reform, United
States House of Representatives, October 21, 1999 contains an EBRI citation.
(11/11/99) "A
High Price Prescription: Clinton's Medicare Drug Proposal" by Robert E. Moffit,
Gail Wilensky, Howard Cohen, and Dwight Bartlet is from the Heritage Foundation Heritage
Lectures series.
(11/10/99) "The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) has made it
possible for preferred provider organizations (PPOs) …to report on member
satisfaction and consumer experiences using the same standardized survey instrument as
HMOs -- the
Consumer Assessment of Health Plans Study (CAHPSO 2.0H)."
(11/10/99) Click
here for the press release on a study by the U.S. Agency for Health Care Policy and
Research (AHCPR) and the National Business Coalition for Health (NBCH) which suggests that
most business coalitions -- regional, state and local groups of employers with common
interests in health care coverage for their workers and dependent -- have processes in
place that could be tapped to promote quality, just as their market power helped contain
health care costs earlier this decade by encouraging the growth of managed care.
(11/10/99) At a press conference on October 7, 1999, Rep. Nick Smith announced eighteen
findings of the House Budget Committee's Task Force on Social Security which should
prevail in any reform proposal that becomes law. Click
here for the press release, which includes a link to the findings.
(11/9/99) Stretching
the Pension Dollar: Improving U.S. Retirement Security and National Saving by Enhancing
Employer-Based Pension Plans is a study prepared by APPWP and the American
Council for Capital Formation.
(11/9/99) How
Federal Managed Care Legislation Affects You: A Comparison of Key Provisions in the Senate
and House Bills on Managed Care is available from FamiliesUSA.
(11/8/99) A survey released by the Investment Company Institute (ICI) and the
Securities Industry Association (SIA) is available online:
(11/8/99) A
Comparison of Revenue Provisions in H.R. 2990 As Passed by the House and the Senate is
available from the Joint Committee on Taxation.
(11/8/99) "The
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) announced that the maximum benefit it will
guarantee for retirees in underfunded single- employer defined benefit plans that
terminate in the year 2000 will be $3,221.59 per month, or $38,659.08 per year."
(11/8/99) The Travelers Insurance Company posts Pension Highlights. A recent
edition includes a compact table
of the year 2000 Cost-of-Living Adjustments showing the dollar cost of living
adjustments (COLAs) that apply for various purposes to retirement plans or under Social
Security.
(11/8/99) The New York State Insurance Department has posted the New
York Consumer Guide to Health Insurers to help consumers make decisions about
their health insurance.
(11/5/99)The National Coalition on Health Care has posted Using
the Federal Income Tax System to Expand Health Insurance Coverage: A Primer on the Issues
by Steven D. Findlay and Joel E. Miller.
(11/5/99) Click
here for the press release titled "National Survey Examines Employer Action
Against the Threat of Breast Cancer: U.S. businesses challenged to improve workplace
practices in seven areas by the year 2002."
(11/5/99) The Profit Sharing/ 401(k) Council of America provides the Measuring
Results Worksheet, a tool designed to help companies with both the planning and
measurement of employee retirement education programs.
(11/4/99) HealthCast
2010 is a view of the future of the healthcare industry from the healthcare
practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
(11/3/99) The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has released
"Proposed Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health
Information." Click below for:
(11/2/99) "Equity,
Savings, and Growth" by Nancy Birdsall, Thomas C. Pinckney, Richard H. Sabot is
The Center on Social and Economic Dynamics' Working Paper No. 8, October 1999.
(11/1/99) The Social Security Network Web site has added a new section on The
President's Social Security Plan.
(11/1/99) President
Clinton is proposing regulations on electronic medical records.
(11/1/99) Click
here for a brief comparison of the Democratic candidates' health reform
proposals, plus figures from an independent analysis by Kenneth Thorpe of Emory
University.
(11/1/99) A
Quarter Century of Protecting Pension and Health Benefits by the Department of
Labor commemorates 25 years of protecting pension and health benefits under the Employee
Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).
(11/1/99) The
American Medical Association and six other physician groups announced their own health
information Web site -- a new healthcare information site for consumers that will also
function as a communications portal between MDs and patients.
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