Washington whipped into frenzy ahead of ObamaCare ruling

The wait is almost over for what could be the last big legal threat to ObamaCare.

Court watchers are working themselves into a frenzy awaiting a decision on King v. Burwell, one of the most anticipated cases of the year.

On opinion days, dozens of reporters are packing into the court or swarming the steps outside, while nearly 10,000 people tune into SCOTUSblog for live updates. False reports attempting to predict the timing of the decision have only further fueled the hype.

Across Capitol Hill, Republicans in the House and Senate briefed their members for the first time on Wednesday, trying to calm fears about what could happen to the 6.4 million people whose health insurance subsidies are at stake in the case.

Some of K Street’s biggest lobby firms are drafting “predecision” memos and briefing clients, even those outside of the healthcare realm about how they could be hit by a ruling.

Democrats are also getting nervous.

On the same afternoon as the Republican meetings, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell privately met with members of the New Democrat Coalition on Wednesday to talk about the case.

"In my state of Georgia, 500,000 people would lose their insurance — 8 or 9 million people across the country. And all [states] have to do is put the exchanges in place,” Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) said as he left the closed-door meeting.

A spokeswoman for the coalition’s chairman, Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), said she couldn’t discuss details, but confirmed the administration’s response to the case was the “main topic of discussion.”

The growing anticipation surrounding King v. Burwell exploded shortly after midnight Wednesday, when news first broke that GOP leaders would begin briefing rank-and-file members about the case.

The meetings took place in separate corners of the Capitol a few hours apart, and both drew unusually large scrums of reporters.

Facing a barrage of questions after the Senate’s lunch-time discussion, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) allowed a half-dozen reporters to cram into his elevator, where Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had already stepped inside.

“Easy, easy,” Cruz said as he was backed into the corner.

“This is an unusual situation isn’t it? We have a presidential candidate in here!” Barrasso exclaimed. He then allowed the gaggle to follow him onto the subway beneath the Capitol Dome and back to his Dirksen Building office, with more questions along the way.

Republicans have spent four months quietly crafting contingency plans for King v. Burwell. While the case drew some attention during oral arguments in March, the hype is approaching new heights with just a few days left of court decisions this summer.

This week’s meetings marked the first time that most members heard details about those plans.

Click here to read full article: By Sarah Ferris - 06/21/15 05:00 PM EDT

Fortune Business Solutions reaches close to 500 Million Annually in 2014

Our Mission:  

The Fortune Business Solutions team is dedicated to providing your company with innovative, hands-on Human Resource Management and comprehensive and cost-effective employee services and benefits that allow you to attract and retain high quality personnel. The result is a better working environment for your employees and, therefore, increased efficiency and profitability for your company.

Established: October 1997

Number of Employees: 18,000+

Revenues: $488,489,781 Million Annually (2014)

How Will ObamaCare Affect Your Small Business?

March 24, 2015

While the majority of employers and employees won’t pay any additional taxes under the ACA, there is an increase to the current Medicare part A tax for businesses and employees making over $200,000. There is also a requirement for employers with 50 full-time equivalent employees or more to offer health insurance to full-time workers or pay a penalty starting in 2015 / 2016.

FACT: 90% of US firms have less than 20 full-time employees and about 96% of firms have fewer than 50 full-time employees. More than 96 percent of firms with 50 or more employees already offer health insurance to their workers. Less than 0.2 percent of all firms (about 10,000 out of 6 million) face employer responsibility requirements.  

ObamaCare helps most small businesses. The fact is, small business owners have historically had a much harder time providing themselves and their employees with insurance due to rising health insurance costs; meanwhile bigger businesses have remained largely unaffected due to the leverage buying large group health plans gives them. This problem has only gotten more severe in the past decade.  

A report by the common wealth fund in 2006 showed the nation’s smallest firms pay an average of 18 percent more in health insurance premiums for the same benefits than those in the largest firms, while costs of providing health insurance to small business employees had been rising higher than inflation rates prior to the Affordable Care Act.

Employers must offer health insurance or be subject to penalties.

Employers must offer health  insurance that is affordable and provides minimum value to their  full-time employees and their  children up to age 26 or be subject to penalties.

This is known as the employer mandate. It applies to employers with 50 or more  full-time employees, or full-time equivalents, and will be phased  in during 2015 and 2016 based on employer size. Employees who work 30 or more  hours per week are considered full-time.

To learn more, click here.

Starting in 2015, all employers are required to report the following to OSHA

Safety & Health

OSHA has developed an updated record keeping rule. The rule was effective on January 1, 2015 and requires that establishments in states under Federal OSHA jurisdiction must comply with the new rule as of the effective date. Starting in 2015, all employers are required to report the following to OSHA:

• All work related fatalities-Within 8 hours of finding out about them.
• All work related inpatient hospitalizations of one or more employees-Within 24 hours.
• All work related amputations, with or without bone loss-Within 24 hours.
• All work related losses of an eye-Within 24 hours.

For any inpatient hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye, Employers only have to report if the action occurs with 24 hours of a work related incident. Employers have three options to report the event and are required to:

• By phone to the nearest OSHA area office during normal business hours.
• By telephone to the 24-hour OSHA hotline at 1-800-321-OSHA (6742).
• OSHA is developing a means of reporting events electronically, which will be available soon.

When reporting the event to OSHA, be prepared to provide as much information, in detail about the event being reported. Information regarding this new requirement is available in detail on the OSHA website at www.osha.govor you can contact Jess Carrillo, Safety & Risk Manager at Fortune Business Solutions.

Human Resources
Giving thanks for good performance 

Employees respond to recognition and rewards

According to U.S. workers, the most common form of recognition their employer provides is salary increases based on merit (39 percent). Less than a third (31 percent) said that direct supervisors express verbal or written appreciation, and only about 1 in 4 (24 percent) reported that their organization uses performance-based bonuses or promotions as a form of recognition. These were some of the findings of a survey released by the American Psychological Association (APA) Center for Organizational Excellence.

Employees who said that recognition practices are fair, that direct supervisors provide recognition effectively, and that they value the recognition they receive reported a variety of positive outcomes. They reported higher levels of job satisfaction, a greater likelihood to work harder because of the recognition they receive, stronger motivation to do their best, and a greater sense of feeling valued. In addition, employees who received recognition more recently also reported higher levels of satisfaction, motivation, and work effort.

Additional findings from the survey include:

• More than a quarter of working adults (28 percent) said that written or verbal appreciation from their direct supervisor is important, but when it comes to the types of recognition that working Americans say are important to them, money tops the list. Six out of 10 employees (62 percent) cited merit-based salary increases as important, followed by fair monetary compensation (47 percent), performance-based bonuses (43 percent), and promotions or advancement (38 percent).


• Men and women reported that recognition in general is equally important to them (87 percent), but men were more likely than women to report being satisfied with their employer’s recognition practices (54 percent vs. 46 percent), to believe that recognition is provided fairly in their organization (52 percent vs. 42 percent), and to say their supervisor provides recognition effectively (56 percent vs. 47 percent).


• Although 4 in 10 employees reported working remotely at least sometimes (30 percent sometimes, 5 percent often, 6 percent always), no significant relationships were found between employees working remotely and their satisfaction with recognition or how long they plan to stay with their current employer.

Source: BLR

2015 Update: Upgrading our payroll and benefits systems

Over the past year Fortune has invested a great deal of time in upgrading our payroll and benefits systems. The areas that we are concentrating on are the areas that affect our clients’ bottom line as well as creating improved efficiency. The specific areas in which we are focusing are as follows:

HRPyramid Vision

(Rollout will start July 1, 2015) 

· Single integrated platform with payroll, human resources, benefits administration and online new hire processing
· 100% Browser based
· Granular access control
· Web-Services enabled
  Cloud delivery

Online New Hire Processing

(Available immediately)

· Efficient New Hire Processing
· Integrated e- Verify processing
· Integrated background screening
· Workflow engine and notifications ensure timely processing
· Employee initiated life event processing

Online Benefits Enrollment

(Available immediately)

· Seamlessly integrated with Payroll and Imaging
· Enhanced benefits setup
· More efficient and accurate enrollment

ACA Compliance

· Any clients that have more than 50 full time employees and do not offer health insurance should contact us so we can share with them the compliance pack we have developed to protect them from any penalties in the future.

Read more about the FICA taxable wage base has increased from $117,000 to $118,500 in 2015. The SUTA wage limits are listed below:

Visit: http://www.fortune-hr.com/Email/021715.html

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