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5500 Preparer's Manual for 2012 Plan Years
The premier resource in the field of Form 5500 preparation, 5500 Preparer's Manual will help you handle the required annual Form 5500 filings for both pension benefits and welfare benefit plans.
from Spencer’s Benefits Reports: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (P.L. 111-5) includes provisions pertaining to the health coverage tax credit (HCTC) available to individuals qualified under the Trade Adjustment Act (TAA) or for Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation pension benefits, as well as to HIPAA privacy and administrative simplification provisions.
P.L. 111-5 increases from the current 65% to 80% the HCTC for individuals who are qualified under the TAA or the PBGC pension benefit program, effective with the first day of the first month beginning 60 days after February 17, the date of enactment of the law, through December 2010. Health insurance that qualifies for the HCTC includes COBRA, state-sponsored continuation of health care coverage, state employee coverage, and the individual’s spouse’s group health coverage.
With respect to the HIPAA privacy and administrative simplification provisions, P.L.111-5 amends the HIPAA definition of a health care plan to include a Medicare Part D prescription drug plan. The new law also extends to business partners the application of the HIPAA privacy rules and all related requirements that currently apply only to covered entities such as medical providers and health care plans. Currently, HIPAA also does not apply the security standards and related civil and criminal penalties for violations to business partners the in the same manner as it applies to providers and health care plans.
The administrative simplification provisions of HIPAA require a security standard to protect electronically transmitted personal health information. P.L. 111-5 clarifies that a security breach does not include the following: “a disclosure where a person would not reasonably be able to retain the information disclosed; any inadvertent disclosure from an individual who is otherwise authorized to access protected health information at a facility operated by a covered entity or business associate to another similarly situated individual at the same facility, provided that any such information received thereby is not further acquired, accessed, used, or disclosed without authorization.”
The Conference Report clarifies that personal health records (PHRs) are “managed, shared, and controlled by or primarily for the individual,” which means that PHRs include the types of records managed by or for individuals, “but does not include the kinds of records managed by or primarily for commercial enterprises, such as life insurance companies that maintain such records for their own business purposes.”
P.L. 111-5 also requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to issue annual guidance on the most effective and appropriate “technical safeguards” to protect electronic health information. In addition, the new law requires covered entities to report to affected individuals any breaches of unsecured personal health information and to notify the HHS and the media if the breach involves more than 500 people. Within six months of the date of the law’s enactment, the HHS must designate a privacy adviser in each regional office; and within 12 months the agency must develop a national education program about individuals’ privacy rights.
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