“A Little Help: The Impact of On-line Calculators and Financial Advisors on Setting Adequate Retirement-Savings Targets: Evidence from the 2013 Retirement Confidence Survey,” and “'Post' Script: What’s Next for Employment-Based Health Benefits?”

Retirement-Savings Targets: The use of online calculators and retirement advisors has been linked to higher levels of retirement confidence – and with justification, according to new research from EBRI. Health Benefits: With key provisions of the federal health care reform law scheduled to take effect in the near future, what’s in store for the existing system of employment-based health benefits? That was the focus of the 71st policy forum sponsored by EBRI, which brought in some of the nation’s top health experts, including Assistant Secretary of Labor Phyllis Borzi. Employment-based health benefits remain the most common form of health coverage in the United States.

Retirement-Savings Targets:

• Those using an on-line calculator or asking a financial advisor appear to set more adequate savings targets, as measured by the probability of not running short of money in retirement.

• Those in the lowest-income quartile show a 9.1?12.6 percentage point improvement (depending on family/gender) in the probability of not running short of money in retirement if a financial advisor has been asked, and a 14.6?18.2 percentage point increase if an on-line calculator is used.

• Those who “guessed” at a retirement savings target were less likely to choose an adequate target.

Health Benefits:

At EBRI’s 71st policy forum, some of the nation’s top health policy experts raised these points, among others:

• Recent discussions in Congress to possibly cap or reduce the tax exclusion for health benefits could result in a big shock for workers.

• A major problem underlying rising healthcare spending is the nation’s rapidly aging population.

• While health care cost trends made change inevitable, PPACA exacerbated the impact on two key fronts: the administrative difficulties in dealing with health exchanges, and the fees imposed on employers.

• For small employers, the attraction of having workers get health coverage through a health exchange (rather than their jobs) is going to be very strong.