Interpreting health care reform is like learning to dance with the clay skeleton.(Employee-Consumer)

Byline: Ed Bray, J.D.

As you start your day as a busy benefits professional, you turn on the morning news, and you hear that the Department of Health and Human Services has changed the Form W-2 health insurance reporting requirement effective date from 2011 to 2012. You then log on to the Internet and see that the Republicans have gained control of the House of Representatives and are vowing to repeal and replace health care reform legislation. As you get into your car, your medical insurance carrier representative calls saying she needs to explain the carrier's interpretation and practice of handling grandfathered and nongrandfathered plans.

It's 7:03 a.m., and you've already witnessed three dances from the "clay skeleton."

The clay skeleton is a playful yet practical way of describing health care reform legislation, which has and will continue to be pushed, pulled, and molded by numerous influences. The dances are the impact that each of these influences has on the clay skeleton. (See chart, below.)

With everything on your plate, it's critical that you have easy and immediate access to health care reform updates. Employee benefit-related websites, such as healthcare.gov, benefitslink.com, ebn.benefitnews.com and your medical insurance carrier's site all provide news and up-to-date information on health care reform.

Now that you have the right shoes, you need to find a dance partner who can help you sashay effectively through the next eight years. These include:

* Employee benefit consultants. Focus on consultants who are prepared to develop short-term and long-term benefit strategies (including robust financial modeling), have significant communication experience (to prepare you for continual back and forth with senior management and employees), and will assist you with implementing the health care reform provisions affecting your organization.

* Employee benefits attorneys. Based on the breadth, volume and volatility associated with health care reform and its respective provisions, it will be well-worth your investment to retain an employee benefits attorney that specializes in the health care reform legislation.

You'll want to ensure that both senior management and any internal functional areas you work with (e.g., payroll, HR information systems, finance) appreciate and respect the clay skeleton and its dance. As departments one step removed from the everyday volatility of health care reform, but heavily engaged in its implementation, it will be critical to educate your functional areas so they can gain an understanding of the impact it will have on their responsibilities.

Because there are so many influences on health care reform, it is not anticipated that the dance will end anytime soon, nor is it known how many moves it will generate. However, if you have the right shoes (a good understanding of where to find the most up-to-date information), plus the right dance teacher (someone dedicated to getting you through the lefts, rights, ups and downs of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), you'll be prepared to perfect the dance sooner than you know.

Contributing Editor Ed Bray is director of compliance for Burnham Benefits Insurance Services and Burnham Gibson Financial Services. He helps corporate clients establish and maintain regulatory compliance for their health and welfare benefit plans. He can be reached at bray@burnhambenefits.com.

How to end up feeling like a right Twit; A WICKEDLY FUNNY TAKE ON MODERN IRELAND.(Features)

Byline: Anne Gildea

I have young friend who helps me with New Technology -- he regularly explains how all new various wastes of time, sorry, cutting-edge social communication platforms, interface and how I should use them. And I just as regularly forget everything he's told me. And off we go again.

I tried to blog, once. But it felt silly, like going 'me, me, me', idiotically assuming anyone would be interested but me. (Unlike the finely wrought reams of insight I write here, says you.) But blogging is a useful promotional tool, a PR chum tells me. Yes, like a hammer for bashing people over the head whilst shouting 'Look, me! I exist! C'est moi! Bish, bash, bosh.' But I see what she's saying: Yo! You need to assert the Youness of You Composing a character is like having to if You're serious about You and Your Place in the Modern World. We all need to be the personal marketing managers of our own identities these days, it seems. Plus some people have even got book deals out of their blogging efforts, you can be dead clever about it all.

But I come from perhaps the last Irish generation who were raised on notions of personal discretion and modesty. 'Would the Virgin Mary have been a blogger?' is the kind of question we'd have been encouraged to ponder. And the answer would be: No, probably not. I can't help thinking that if you want to write a book, why don't you just go ahead and write a bloody book, and stop diddling round on the internet? Oldfashioned That's what I am.

Then a young friend showed me Twitter. He set me up on it. 'Now write something,' he said. My hands jigged above the keys. 'I can't. Let me think about it,' I pleaded. 'I'll come back to it,' I promised.

'What a hopeless oldie,' I could see him thinking. How difficult can it be to come up with words comprising not more that 140 characters? To some people, that's a quick blurt, but to others (me) it's the challenge of producing a veritable haiku. But later, I did return. And I've joined the gang. I'm now a Twit! For my first tweet I mentioned an exhibition I'd been at. I said -- wait for it... I liked it. I have now arrived in Brave New World Land.

I knew little about Twitter before I began. I'd heard Demi & Ashton, the ultimate 'Is that a marriage or a PR stunt?' Hollywood couple, were early aficionados (point against). And that Twitter, it is claimed, was pivotal in recent revolutions. I guess someone tweeted: 'Had enough of the thieving, murdering, despotic, supportedby-Western-powers monster who's in charge here, anyone?' And someone else tweeted back 'yep'. Next thing there's hundreds of thousands camping out on the street and voila, regime change (point for).

Plus I knew Twitter had gone from zero to 95 million messages per day in the space of a couple of years. So 'bandwagon', 'jump on' and 'why not?' were considerations. Best of all it's so easy, and short. Forget haikus. Let's face it -- 140 characters; even if you've nothing to say it's still so easy to say it.

Once you're up and running with your own 'handle' (mine's @AnneGildea) Twitter has an information bar that tells you 'who to follow'. You probably know this already but please allow me to be naively amazed. The first two I clicked on were comics -- Bill Bailey and Sarah Silverman, respective current tweets at the time: 'a woodlouse has just evolved in my garden, become sentient, its first words to me were "stop Jedward" and "the crotch of my tights is about 4 below the crotch of my crotch."' Wowee -- how did I live without this info stream till now?

Then I started 'following' Charlie Sheen, the 'unemployed winner', according to himself; the publicly imploding sitcom thespian according to everyone else. We joined Twitter around the same time. He got a million followers within a day. I got 37 -- ruthless indicator of your standing in the world, this ol' Twitter thing. He tweeted that he has tigerblood in his veins. '#tigerblood', he wrote. Hashtag tigerblood is now trending big time. Does that sentence I just wrote mean anything? Yes, apparently. This is futurespeak, now! I tweeted '#thenualas' to promote our upcoming gig in Vicar St. It's not 'trending' but it felt proactive. I probably don't have enough followers.

'Followers'. I love that notion. Imagine if they had Twitter in the time of Christ: how handy for Him. Imagine the Jesus tweets: 'Why not follow me? #sonofgod'; 'And then I said unto him arise from the dead, and he did! #lazarus!'. Would the apostles have been like: 'Hey, man, is it okay if we just "follow" you on Twitter?' Would the ability to just click a button to 'unfollow' have scuppered vocations? In the time it's taken to write this, I've been 'unfollowed' once. I'm down to 36. What to do, #tigerblood?

'Twitter, the best way to discover what's new in your world,' the website boasts. Well, actually, you could just look out the window, or chat to your chums. But I guess that's not how things are done any more. #boohoo, I find that a bit sad.

anne.gildea@mailonsunday.ie

Did you know? Tweets are designed to be no more than 140 characters long so that they can be sent through mobile phone SMS services

EQUINOXES Spring begins tonight at 11.21 in the Northern Hemisphere, the vernal or March equinox There are 2 equinoxes a year, around March 20-21 and September22-23 Contrary to common belief, the length of time between sunrise and sunset is closest to being 12 hours during the equilux, which generally falls on a different day to the equinox Equinoxes occur about 6 hours later every year, with a jump of 1 day backwards on Leap Years

CUB Analyzes Alternative Electricity Offers in Illinois, Gives Consumers Apples-to-Apples Comparison on Competing Deals.

CHICAGO, March 9, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In response to an unprecedented advertising blitz by alternative electric companies in northern Illinois, the Citizens Utility Board (CUB) said Wednesday that it has released a new fact sheet that gives consumers key information about shopping in the electricity market and allows them to compare competing offers with the price they pay for Commonwealth Edison.

"Consumers need more than ads and gimmicks to make the right choice in the electricity market, they need objective information," CUB Executive Director David Kolata said. "If you are thinking of switching, there are things you should know."

CUB's fact sheet, "Electric Competition: What You Should Know," can be found on the "Electric" page of the consumer group's award-winning website, www.CitizensUtilityBoard.org.

In addition to giving consumers an apples-to-apples comparison of the prices offered by ComEd and competing suppliers, CUB's fact sheet also provides key information that may be surprising to shoppers in the electricity market:

* Going with an alternative supplier does not mean you're leaving ComEd completely-and it won't shield you from the company's rate hikes.

* Some of the companies charge exit fees-as high as $150-that would cost you plenty if you wanted to get out before your contract is up.

* Some companies offer slightly higher rates for a "green" option, but that doesn't mean alternative energy is powering your home.

Companies have been hitting consumers with door-to-door, e-mail, Internet, and mailing campaigns sometimes guaranteeing double-digit percentage savings-at least for the next few months. One company even gave away cupcakes in a promotion in downtown Chicago.

At least six companies have been marketing in ComEd's territory, ever since a decision by the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) last December made it easier for them to bill for their services through ComEd. Every offer to date has beaten ComEd's current price for electricity. ComEd's price, however, is set to drop in June, so nobody knows how the offers will compare in a few months.

CUB is Illinois' leading nonprofit utility watchdog organization. Created by the Illinois Legislature, CUB opened its doors in 1984 to represent the interests of residential and small-business utility customers. Since then, CUB has helped save consumers more than $10 billion by blocking rate hikes and securing refunds. For more information, call CUB's Consumer Hotline at 1-800-669-5556, or visit www.CitizensUtilityBoard.org.

SOURCE Citizens Utility Board