Shelly

Mid-summer is a busy time of year for us at Clearwater Writing. In addition to special projects and SPDs, we’re helping our clients get started with open enrollment communications (and trying to stay cool in the 115 degree heat!).

This year, there are two laws going into place that will affect your SPDs and possibly certain parts of your open enrollment materials. We’re keeping an eye out for additional information and guidelines as they come out, but here’s what we know so far:

• Mental Health Parity (effective 1.1.10 or the first plan year beginning after 10.3.09) – Requires plans that have mental health and/or substance abuse treatment coverage to provide the same benefit as for any other illness or injury. That means such common plan provisions as different coinsurance amounts, annual and lifetime maximums, limits on number of visits, etc for mental health and substance abuse treatment will no longer be allowed. At this time we don’t know if there will be any requirement of a special or annual notice, but guidance and information from the feds is due on 10.3.09.

• Michelle’s Law (effective 1.1.10 or the first plan year beginning on or after 10.9.09) – Requires extended health care coverage, for at least one year, if a post-secondary school student loses full-time student status because he or she must take a leave of absence from studies due to a serious illness or injury.  Coverage may be ended sooner under certain limited circumstances, such as the student reaching the plan’s maximum age.  However, some states apparently are looking at raising the maximum age for students. There are still unanswered questions about certain aspects of this law, such as who pays for the extended coverage.

If you have questions about how these may affect your communications, please call or send us an email. And if you’re a new client, be sure to check out our annual enrollment offer that could save you 20% on your communications costs this year. We’d love you to join our other clients who get quality communications and great ideas for less.

Five years ago - almost to the day - I was lucky enough to meet Darla Mansfield and join Clearwater Writing.  As Darla started her expansion effort, we stood in an empty office space at 3100 West Ray Road with only a cool paperclip wall hanging to decorate our space.

As we’ve moved through the past five years, we’ve changed as a company - and as people - in so many ways.  We’ve had the opportunity to add some really great clients, such as Viacom, Alltel, PotashCorp and Edwards Lifeciences.  We’ve continued to expand our knowledge base, with Shelly and Jude completing their CEBS designation and Branden passing test after test.  And we’ve stayed on top of the curve as far as ‘what’s hot’ in benefits, compensation and HR communication.

Today, we’re facing a new challenge - the economy.  Layoffs, cutbacks…it’s hard to find any good news out there right now.  So we’re continuing to partner with our clients, offering low-cost communications solutions while still doing a bang-up job.  And of course we’re counting the days until things turn around and all is ’happy’ again.

For now, we’re proud to roll out our new website.  It’s been a long time coming, and we’re really excited about it.  Oh - and if you didn’t notice, we added a blog!  Blogging is the latest and greatest way to tell friends and colleagues what you’re up to.  So we’re going to do just that.  Be sure to check back often. We’ll be posting updates about us, our clients and maybe even some ERISA requirements here and there.  I promise, it won’t all be boring.