The Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) offers many kinds of compliance assistance, which includes but is not limited to – publications, voluntary compliance programs and advisory opinions. You can find a plethora of information about compliance assistance by going to the EBSA’s webpage. It’s designed to help employers and employee benefit plan practitioners recognize what the ERISA requirements are.
This federal law sets the minimum standards for the majority of voluntarily-established private sector health and retirement plans to ensure protection for those individuals in the plans.
The ERISA makes it so that participants have the plan information they need to make informed decisions about their health coverage. This information can include plan funding and features, offers fiduciary responsibilities to people who are handling the plan’s assets, demands a plan is set up for the grievance and appeals process to ensure participants get their benefits, etc.
The ERISA has several amendments added to it, increasing protections of health plan participants and their beneficiaries COBRA is a fine example of an added protection.
