Alcott HR Group announced that its Western New York Division will be providing its comprehensive human resources solution on behalf of Alpina Foods Inc. (Miami, Fla.), the U.S. arm of Alpina (Bogota, Colombia). Alcott will specifically be serving the staff of Alpina Foods in the company’s Miami location, as well as the staff for the soon-to-be-completed 28,000 square-foot manufacturing plant in Western New York’s Genesee Valley Agri-Business Park, located in Batavia, NY. Construction of the plant is now underway with plans to be operational in the summer of 2012. Fifty new jobs will be created at the plant and Alcott will be managing the payroll administration, employee benefits design and administration, tax administration and regulatory compliance on behalf of Alpina Foods and its new employees.

Led by John H. Bradley, Director of Operations and Sales for the WNY Division, Alcott is an active member of the local Western New York business community. The company learned of Alpina through its relationship with the Buffalo Niagara Enterprise, one of the region’s marketing and economic development partner organizations.

According to Alpina Foods Managing Director Carlos Ramirez Zavarce, “We are very excited about our new manufacturing plant and the opportunity it will afford us in meeting the growing demand for our products in the U.S. market. We look forward to establishing partnerships in Western New York with local suppliers, distributors and retailers. It is a direct reflection of our business model and corporate culture that we become integral members of the communities in which we are located. For us, that will entail working with local dairy farmers, milk cooperatives and other vendors in the supply chain to effectively serve the market.”

In addition to its community-centered and partnership philosophy, Alpina Foods also regards its employees as valuable assets and wanted to provide them with high-quality benefits and employee services. Through Alcott, not only will management be receiving administrative support, regulatory compliance and risk management services, Alpina Foods’ employees will be gaining access to a robust suite of employee benefits, from health insurance, dental, vision, life and disability to flexible spending accounts and 401(k) retirement plans. Additionally, Alcott offers many value-added benefits such as Employee Assistance Program (EAP), adoption assistance, scholarship program, credit union membership, transit check administration, qualified parking program and employee discount program for shopping, travel and entertainment, and fitness club memberships.

For more information about Alpina Foods, visit www.alpina.com or on Facebook: www.facebook.com/alpinausa, or email alpinafoods@alpina.com.

While the healthcare reform debate continues and everyone awaits the Supreme Court’s decision in June, employers and employees alike are gravitating toward consumer-driven healthcare arrangements including high deductible health plans, health savings accounts (HSAs), health reimbursement arrangements  (HRAs), and flexible spending accounts (FSAs). All of these plans give employees a financial incentive for more prudent healthcare consumption.  Beyond this, employers are offering ancillary healthcare benefits such as dental and vision, along with traditional life and short and long-term disability insurance. Often the ancillary benefits are presented as 100% employee-paid voluntary, but at a much lower group rate than an individual would be able to secure independently.

Employers are also offering their employees many quality-of-life type benefits. These range from credit union memberships and adoption assistance to scholarship programs, employee assistance programs (EAPs) that offer counseling to employees and their family members, and employee discount programs for things like mass transit, transportation, travel, entertainment and shopping. Employees also value wellness programs and health and fitness club membership discounts that not only encourage a healthy lifestyle but go a long way in containing healthcare costs for both the employer and employee.

Ultimately today’s American workers recognize the challenges the economy poses on everybody, including their employers. Many workers are happy to have jobs and are willing to carry a heavier load if they feel that their employers appreciate them. A well-developed employee benefits package conveys this message and encourages employee loyalty while promoting a higher level of productivity and performance – both critical in a challenging economy.

“Barry and I have always held that if our business model was one in which we were assuming responsibility for another company’s human resources and the related risks, we had to make certain Alcott was adhering to the highest standards,” said Basso. “Being good wasn’t good enough. We had to strive for optimum performance. If that meant helping the industry develop higher standards, we did what it took to drive that goal.”

Basso took a leadership role from the start in the PEO industry, advocating for higher standards, and regulations to assure that organizations calling themselves PEOs would meet certain standards of fiscal integrity, sound infrastructure and operational ethics.

Additionally, Alcott has followed a course of continuous self-improvement. As one of the more active PEOs in the nation, Alcott became one of the first PEOs to be registered in New York and among the first to earn the prestigious E.S.A.C (www.peoreliability.org/alcotthrgroup) certification — the PEO industry equivalent of what the FDIC is to the banking industry. To achieve and maintain certification, Alcott has to continuously meet stringent financial, professional and ethical standards.

Alcott has also always applied leading-edge information technologies (IT) and roll-outs of new offerings to enhance its services to its clients and their worksite employees. It has assumed the role of “educator” hosting regular seminars and webinars on timely HR and workplace-related topics. All of Alcott’s educational programs are designed to help business owners and their management teams maintain a compliant workplace to avoid unnecessary risks and liabilities.

“There is no simple formula for succeeding in business, but there are some basic principles,” said Shorten. “Stay engaged with your customers, advocate for them, continue to add more value to the relationship with market-responsive offering and services, and always allow integrity to drive your business decisions. That philosophy is the foundation of Alcott’s 25-year milestone.”

Over the past 25 years, Alcott has ranked among the New York region’s Top 50 Privately-Owned Companies, 25 Fastest-Growing Private Companies, and Top 100 Private Companies. The company is also a two year in a row recipient of the “Alfred P. Sloane Award for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility.”

Currently, Alcott serves more than 300 companies and their 4,000 employees located throughout the United States including foreign-owned companies in Canada and South America who have established U.S.-based operations.

Small Business:

December 29, 2011 8:30 PM By JAMIE HERZLICH. Special to Newsday

Small businesses on Long Island, already struggling with high health insurance costs, are dreading Empire BlueCross BlueShield’s looming cutbacks in coverage.

The changes will mean hard decisions for many employers, who may have to limit coverage or offer high-deductible plans. Companies will need to take a hard look at employee needs if they’re going to try to manage costs, with the likelihood of even more of the burden being shifted to employees, say experts.

“Gone are the days of rich health plans with very little out-of-pocket for the policy holders,” says Lou Basso of Alcott HR Group, a Farmingdale organization that provides human resources services to businesses, including managing their health plans. “The options in New York State will now be significantly less based on the Blue’s decision to eliminate these plans.”

Empire has announced it is eliminating about seven of its 13 small-group plans. It has since added two small-business products back, says spokeswoman Sally Kweskin. Empire also has said it will discontinue the products on their renewal dates, rather than the originally announced April 1.

Still, many of those products being eliminated were “pretty competitive,” says Basso, noting there’s no magical solution to lower costs.

For starters, some companies may have to choose a high-deductible health plan, which carries greater upfront out-of-pocket costs for employees than a traditional managed care plan but could be 5-10 percent less in annual premiums depending upon the deductible, he notes.

Bill Tobia, owner of Home Medical Equipment in Garden City, says he will have to consider a high-deductible plan once he can no longer stay within his Empire plan.

Limited choices

“My company is under 50 employees, so I don’t have a lot of options,” says Tobia, noting each year he sees double-digit premium increases and has had to pass on more costs to employees. The company, which has renewed with Empire’s Prism EPO for now at a 16 percent average increase in premiums, pays about $163,000 annually in health insurance costs, he says. He’s not sure how long he’ll be allowed to remain in the Empire plan.

“People who are generally healthy might find the transition to a high-deductible plan effective,” says Paul Essner, a certified financial planner and a partner at The Signature Group of Companies, a Garden City insurance, employee benefits and financial services firm with 100 clients impacted by Empire’s decision, including Tobia’s company. Signature is working with clients to help them make plans, says Essner.

Employers can help offset increased upfront costs to workers by creating an employer-funded health reimbursement arrangement (HRA), he says. These are often paired with high-deductible plans and offer employers a tax-advantaged savings vehicle to help fund employees’ unreimbursed medical expenses, says Essner.

Other options

Other options include joining a private health insurance exchange, which offers multiple plan and provider choices to members and allows employees to choose the plans that best suit their needs, rather than have the employer select one plan for everyone, says Vince Ashton, chief executive of HealthPass New York, a not-for-profit commercial exchange.

“We work with insurance carriers to pick the best plans with the best value,” adds Paula Calame, interim executive director of the LIA Health Alliance in Melville, a private exchange, noting they offer plans including Emblem that are competitive with the Empire plans being phased out.

If you can’t afford to offer health insurance, there are options like Healthy NY, a reduced-cost health insurance program sponsored by New York State (see dfs.ny.gov), and Transparent Health Network (transparenthealth.com), which provides access to a network of doctors who have agreed to offer services at a lower, contracted rate if paid at the time of service.

And some employers could qualify for a federal tax credit for providing health coverage to employees (see irs. gov/newsroom/article/0,,id= 220839,00.html).

A Kaiser Family Foundation survey of over 2,000 employers found that group health plan premiums increased 9% in 2011 or to an average cost of $15,703 for family coverage. A state-by-state analysis performed by the Commonwealth Fund (a nonprofit organization that studies health care quality, access and affordability) found that health insurance premiums for employer-based plans increased 50% from 2003 to 2010. The analysis also found that the increase in premiums was greater than the growth in the median household income for every state. The Commonwealth Fund’s analysis projected an additional 72% increase by 2020 if no reforms were made.

According to a National Center for Health Statistics finding, the percentage of group health plan enrollees in high-deductible health plans (e.g., those with deductibles of $1,200 for self-only coverage and $2,400 for family coverage based on how the Department of Health and Human Services defines them), grew from 12.9% in 2007 to 20.3% in the first quarter (Q1) of 2011. Enrollment in consumer-driven health plans — high-deductible plans linked to an HSA or HRA – experienced even greater growth, going from 4.5% in 2007 to 8.8% of group plan participants in Q1 of 2011. FSAs growth grew from 16.7% of group plan participants in 2007 to 20.7% in the Q1 of 2011. The National Center for Health Statistics cited healthcare reform as one of the primary drivers for the growth in consumer-driven health plans.

Based on employers surveyed by Mercer LLC regarding their rising group health plan premiums, 47% said they planned to raise their plans’ deductibles or increase the percentage of plan premiums paid by their employees in 2012. Using high deductible health care plans is a way to contain costs and provide an incentive for employees to be more conscientious health care consumers. A Towers Watson & Co. survey, conducted in the fall of 2010, found that 66% of employers were planning to offer a consumer-driven health plan in 2012.

Consumer-driven healthcare plans offer a win-win for employers and employees alike. They provide financial and tax advantages for both employer and employees, while also encouraging employees to become better informed and more prudent consumers of health care.

PEOs can be a tremendous resource in helping businesses with the due diligence and compliance aspect of the new legislation. Compliance with complex tax-related changes, changes pertaining to certain health care plans such as health savings accounts (HSAs), and associated tax reporting is assumed by the PEO and is one less worry for business owners. Additionally, through their health care offerings, PEOs give businesses access to a menu of competitive health insurance options for their employees, including the most cost-effective consumer-driven plans such as HSAs . Additionally, and in view of the higher healthcare insurance burden now placed on businesses, the PEO’s wellness programs and other related value-added benefits such as discounts to health and fitness clubs, which help contain healthcare costs, are another strong incentive. This, in turn, helps businesses attract and retain the best employees.

A Mercer LLC survey found that small employers (i.e., those with between 10 and 499 employees) experienced an average 9.9% increase in health care plan costs compared with 3.6% increase in plans offered by larger employers. One of the primary reasons cited for the differential was compliance with the new health care reform legislation, which is impacting smaller employers’ more than larger employers. When served by a PEO, the playing field becomes much more level for small businesses.

Tax Credits for Qualifying Small Businesses and Nonprofits

One of the bright sides of health care reform for small businesses are the tax credits for which they may qualify and which will make it more affordable for them to provide health insurance for their employees. To qualify for the PPACA tax credit an employer must have less than the equivalent of 25 full-time workers (for example, an employer with fewer than 50 half-time workers may be eligible). Additionally, the employer must cover at least 50 percent of the cost of health care coverage for some of its workers based on the single rate.  And, the employer  must pay annual average wages under $50,000. Currently, the credit is up to 35% of a small business’ premium costs, and for nonprofits meeting the same criteria the tax credit would be up to 25%. In 2014, the tax credit increases to 50% for qualifying small businesses and 35% for nonprofits.  However, the credit phases out gradually for businesses with average wages between $25,000 and $50,000 and for firms with the equivalent of between 10 and 25 full-time workers.

Guaranteed Renewals

Group plans can no longer be cancelled by insurers due to the illness of a covered member of their group. As for the overall key components of the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” affecting all individuals with health insurance, following are some key points already in effect:

• Insurers can’t drop people from coverage when they become sick.
• Lifetime coverage limits are eliminated and annual limits restricted.
• Children can’t be excluded from coverage due to pre-existing conditions.
• Young adults can remain on their parents’ health plans until age 26 (versus being dropped at age 19 or after finishing college).
• Uninsured adults with pre-existing conditions can obtain health coverage through a new program. Note: The program will expire once the insurance exchanges start operating in 2014.
• Medicare drug beneficiaries who fall into the “donut hole” coverage gap can get a fifty percent discount when purchasing covered brand name prescription drugs.
• New health plans are required to cover preventive services at no or little cost to patients.

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Moxxie Network (www.moxxienetwork.com) is a Long Island-based women’s business community comprised of women and girls from 8 to 70 years old. The mentor award is an outgrowth of the organization’s Mentor Program, which began in January 2010, and was designed to help young female college students learn how to network and gain skills that would help them in their future job search and business career. Through the program, the mentees obtain a mentor as well as gain access to the broader Moxxie community.

As part of its program, the Moxxie Network has workshops on Dressing for Success and field trips to let the students meet successful women representing diverse industries and leading organizations. Other components of the Moxxie Network Mentor Program for mentees include monthly email discussions with their mentors and attendance at various business and networking meetings accompanied by their mentors.

Currently, Moxxie Network has approximately 100 members. For more information about Moxxie Network and its Mentor Program, click here.