On June 13, the ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC), an association representing America’s largest employers, introduced New Benefit Platform for Life Security, which presents a new approach to complement the current voluntary employee benefit system.
The platform recognizes that a secure retirement must include healthcare coverage and provides an opportunity for post-employment coverage. It proposes a new structure for providing benefits through independent benefit administrators who would compete with each other based on quality, use of IT, plan design, and cost. Each benefit administrator would be required to offer plans for a core set of “lifetime security” benefits--health, retirement, and short-term savings.
Employers would have the option of keeping the benefit structure they currently maintain, or participating in the new system by selecting one or more benefit administrators for their employees and dependents.
