The Daily Brief for Benefits Professionals
BenefitsWire
Health & Welfare Plans
August 31, 2026
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7 items · ~3 min read
In this issue
Regulatory Action and Guidance (1) · Health & Welfare Plans (1) · Litigation (3) · General Benefits (2)
Regulatory Action and Guidance
1 item“FAQ Part 74 answers by exercising enforcement discretion. The departments say they will not take action against a plan that provides the reward only from the point the employee satisfies the alternative standard going forward, rather than back to the start of the plan year. The regulatory text did not clearly require retroactive payment, the guidance acknowledges, and the departments are declining to enforce the preamble's stricter reading while rulemaking is assessed. Plans that choose to continue paying retroactively remain free to do so.” MORE >>
Source: insurancebusinessmag.com
Health & Welfare Plans
1 item“Middle-market and enterprise employers seek outsourced and co-sourced leave administration because HR is overburdened, compliance is messy and the employee experience is harder to hold together. FMLA, ADA, PFML, disability, accommodations and growing in-house leave complexity now overlap in ways that are hard for the best HR teams to administer consistently. For decentralized employers, absence management has shifted from a side process to a core business function. When benefit advisers stay uninvolved, they leave room for someone else to frame the problem, define the value and own the strategy.” MORE >>
Source: Employee Benefit News
Litigation
3 items“The court held that Plaintiff had not proven he was unable to perform any gainful occupation once his group disability policy’s definition of disability changed at the 24-month mark. For anyone whose ERISA-governed group disability insurance claim has been denied at the two-year point, the decision is a clear illustration of how much weight a court gives to a treating physician’s own contemporaneous records, and how difficult those records are to overcome once they are in the file.” MORE >>
Source: Roberts Disability Law
“Plaintiff received short-term disability benefits through his Google plan during this period. Although Dr. Ebert initially confirmed that Plaintiff could return to full-time work without restrictions on July 20, Plaintiff did not return, and Dr. Ebert later submitted a form extending the return-to-work date to September 23 while still listing that date as unrestricted. Plaintiff filed a claim for long-term disability benefits from MetLife.” MORE >>
Source: Roberts Disability Law
“LINA initially approved the claim, but after twenty-four months, when the definition of disability shifted from regular occupation to any occupation, LINA terminated benefits based on Plaintiff’s surgeon’s opinion that she could perform a sedentary job, an independent medical assessment by Dr. Kornfield reaching the same conclusion, and a vocational assessment identifying two alternative occupations available in her area, information clerk and gate guard.” MORE >>
Source: Roberts Disability Law
General Benefits
2 items“Almost 90% of compliance, legal and risk leaders are confident employees can apply compliance policies in real-world situations. Among HR and L&D leaders, confidence rises to almost 96%. Recently trained employees, meanwhile, averaged 64.5% on assessments designed to test how they apply compliance knowledge in realistic workplace scenarios. Employees performed strongly when expectations were relatively clear. Among those who had completed harassment prevention training, 90% recognized that an employer has a responsibility to address third-party harassment and 90% recognized that same-sex harassment is covered under federal law. Performance became more uneven when employees needed to interpre” MORE >>
Source: HR Dive
“The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has drafted a regulation designed to facilitate employers’ use of electronic delivery systems as the default option when dealing with the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) and other federal agencies.” MORE >>
Source: Hall Benefits Law