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 Issue Brief #201, September 1998, "Features of Employment-Based Health Plans"

EBRI Notes article, September 1998, "Children and Health Insurance: Sources of Coverage, Spells Without Coverage, 1995"

The agenda for the December 2, 1998, EBRI-ERF Policy Forum, Beyond Ideology: Are Individual Social Security Accounts Feasible?

• The American Compensation Association provides listings of human resources-related congressional bills with links to the bills and to background information on the bills.
  • Senate bills
  • House bills

• Click here for the latest News Online compiled weekly by the staff of Pensions & Investments.

• Late-breaking news items from the weekly publication Business Insurance are posted every Friday before the Monday issue date.

• Click here for the latest available issue of the Washington Status Report from the research staff of Hewitt Associates.

• GAO reports: The following items have been added to the General Accounting Office's Web site in Portable Document (PDF) format:

• Federal Employees' Compensation Act: Percentages of Take-Home Pay Replaced by Compensation Benefits. GGD-98-174. 19 pp. plus 5 appendices (26 pp.) August 17, 1998.
• SSA Benefit Estimate Statements: Adding Rate of Return Information May Not Be Appropriate. HEHS-98-228. September 2, 1998.

• If a GAO title link above no longer works, click here for the GAO Index of Reports and Testimony, FY98, 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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(9/30/98) The National Committee for Quality Assurance has released the second annual edition of The State of Managed Care Quality. Click here to read NCQA's report.   Of related interest is When Employers Choose Health Plans Do NCQA Accreditation and Hedis Data Count? from the The Commonwealth Fund.

(9/29/98) The U.S. Census Bureau has posted the recently released report, Health Insurance Coverage: 1997.

(9/28/98) What's New on the Social Security Network contains a special section in Newsflashes on Tax Cuts and Social Security.

(9/25/98) The September 1998 Watson Wyatt Insider includes an article on self-directed 401(k) investments: "Comparing Investment Returns among Occupations."

(9/24/98) The International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans has posted Managing Multiemployer Health Fund Benefits: Survey Results.

(9/23/98) The Profit Sharing/ 401(k) Council of America (PSCA) has posted the Profit Sharing and 401(k) Plan Cost Disclosure Worksheet.

(9/23/98) The Council on Employee Benefits (CEB) now has a World Wide Web site.

(9/22/98) Click here for Towers Perrin's Sept. 15, 1998, press release on Retirement Income Around the World; and click here for additional information on The Accelerating Evolution of Worldwide Retirement Programs.

(9/22/98) The Summer 1998, Vol. 3, No. 2 edition of Compensation and Working Conditions, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is available online.

(9/21/98) The Department of Labor proposed September 9, 1998, regulations (63 Fed. Reg. 48376) that would revise the content requirements for summary plan descriptions (SPDs).

(9/21/98) The Department of Labor proposed September 9, 1998, regulations revising the claims and appeals process for ERISA-covered group health, welfare, and retirement plans (63 Fed. Reg. 48390).

(9/18/98) Click here for the daily edition of the Society for Human Resource Management's newspaper, HR News Online.

(9/16/98) The U.S. Census Bureau has posted the report, Dynamics of Economic Well-Being: Health Insurance, 1993 to 1995, P70-64.

(9/11/98) EBRI's 20th anniversary celebration will be held on Monday, September 14, 1998, in New York City at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The gala will commemorate EBRI's 20 years of providing unbiased information on employee benefit programs to policymakers, the media, and the public.

(9/11/98) The Concord Coalition has released a 'Facing Facts' Alert on Social Security FICA taxes addressing the question of raising the share of earnings that is subject to Social Security FICA taxes.

(9/9/98) The Heritage Center for Data Analysis has released Social Security's Rates of Return for Union Households by William W. Beach and Gareth G. Davis.

(9/9/98) The Urban Institute has released Long-Term Care for the Elderly: Profiles of Thirteen States by Joshua M. Wiener and David G. Stevenson.

(9/8/98) Celebrate 401(k) Day on September 8 with the Profit Sharing/401(k) Council of America. Check out their 401(k) Day kit for employers.

(9/3/98) The Final Report on the 1998 National Summit on Retirement Savings was released today.

(9/3/98) The Economic Impact of Selected Social Security Reforms: Statement Presented to the Senate Budget Committee, by Rudolph Penner, July 23, 1998, is available at the Urban Institute's website.

(9/2/98) The Health Care Financing Administration has posted Medicare & You: Original Medicare Plan & Other Medicare Health Plan Choices.

(9/1/98) KPMG Peat Marwick's August 1998 issue of benefitsspectrum includes a summary of Retirement Benefits in the 1990s: 1998 Survey Data.

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