Suzanne Elshult, http://hrnow.net Executive Yak, sponsors live round tables for senior marketing and human resources executives in the Seattle area and offers executive / professional coaching and virtual learning opportunities for leaders, business owners, consultants and coaches committed to growth and high performance.

As the healthcare reform debate rages on in Washington, HR executives are having to manage the fallout from an increasingly antagonistic environment. Some businesses are openly taking a position and engaging their employees as advocates. Others are staying neutral and taking a wait and see approach and closely monitoring what will come out of Washington and what it will mean for their employee benefit plans. Without a doubt many plan sponsors are also actively thinking about the impact of some of the proposals on their plans and their Employer Brands.

In a few weeks I will be meeting with a group of senior HR executives here in the Pacific Northwest to discuss a variety of critical issues related to healthcare reform. Here are some of the questions this group has decided to address:

• What should we – HR executives – be asking of ourselves and our executive leadership? How can we take a strong leadership role relative to healthcare reform? Should we?
• Is your company taking a public position wt re: to reform? Is your company approaching this issue from a “business” or “moral” perspective or both?
• How are you communicating about healthcare reform wt your employees? Are you trying to engage them with a particular point of view (asking them to send letters to senators etc)? What about unions?
• What are the real life impacts on your organization of various healthcare reform scenarios, how will they affect your organization and how should you position yourself for the decisions that need to be made in your role as steward of your organizations’ benefit and total compensation dollars?
• Is it possible that many of you in fact have plans that do not measure up to what the government states is sufficient levels of coverage?
• What would be acceptable minimum coverage to avoid an employer getting fined – or needing to pay a tax?
• How is the sufficiency of the plan assessed (i.e. by design elements such as coinsurance and size of deductible; by premium costs, by percentage of employer contribution to premiums? What are the early indicators on what is acceptable to be considered a player in the “pay or play” world we will likely be seeing?
• What are implications of this on recent trends that encourage more employee skin in the game – (HSA, HRA, qualified HDHP plans, etc,)?
• Does the endorsement of wellness as central to the strategy of containing costs open the door to more aggressive “carrot and stick” motivators to encourage participation in wellness programs?
• What tax implications will most likely be included – and what are the likely effective dates – and how do we educate /communicate same to our employees?

What other questions and issues do you think HR Executives need to concern themselves with relative to healthcare reform? Do you have stories related to healtcare reform to tell? Go to http://hrundercover.com

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