Washington, DC – The ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC) provided a statement for the record to the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee’s Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions ahead of today’s hearing titled “Improving Retirement Security and Access to Mental Health Benefits.”
“Employers want to offer benefits that are timely, helpful, and meaningfully improve the lives of employees and their families. Access to mental health and improving retirement options are just two ways large employers are doing this, but they need Congress’s help to do more,” said Annette Guarisco Fildes, President and CEO, ERIC.
ERIC’s testimony focused on retirement policies that allow for flexibility while removing unnecessary and burdensome administrative requirements that create inefficiencies and reduce opportunities for savings. Our policy suggestions included:
- Maintaining electronic disclosure as an option for default distribution
- Not imposing burdensome new administrative requirements
- Simplifying reporting and disclosure requirements by eliminating redundant and unnecessary disclosures
- Expanding the ability of plans to self-correct plan errors
- Affirming the fiduciary responsibility to optimize financial outcomes for plan participants
- Strengthening voluntary retiree health care and life insurance benefits by continuing to permit overfunded pension plans to fund them
- Providing a safe harbor for the recovery of retirement plan overpayments
- Creating a searchable Retirement Savings Lost and Found
- Modernizing the definition of a Highly Compensated Employee to reflect salaries in the modern skilled workforce
- Stopping unnecessary and harmful PBGC premium increases
- Allowing workers to access retirement savings in a personal emergency
- Defending ERISA preemption against efforts to regulate retirement plans at the state level
“Large employers, like ERIC member companies, are dedicated to offering helpful retirement options to their workers that will allow them to save for the future. The provisions we have provided to the Subcommittee allow plan participants more opportunities to save while giving plan sponsors more flexibility in plan operations,” said Guarisco Fildes.
ERIC’s testimony also focused on steps lawmakers can take to expand access to mental health care. ERIC argued that using civil monetary penalties for parity violations is not the answer. Instead, lawmakers should focus on clear-cut, comprehensive guidance that helps employers support their workforce. We offered recommendations from ERIC’s report, “Prioritizing Employee Mental Health: Solutions for Congress,” which is focused on improving patient access, making care more affordable, and driving value in the mental and behavioral health system. Our recommendations included:
- Allowing mental health providers to practice across state lines
- Expanding telehealth benefits to ALL employees
- Incentivizing providers into mental health practice with tuition reimbursement and funding
- Ensuring provider directories indicate if a provider is accepting new patients
- Improving coordination of care
- Publishing provider quality and safety data to drive better patient outcomes
- Modernizing rules for health care accounts to better support patients and lower costs
- Reducing red tape to encourage employers to innovate better mental and behavioral health benefits
- Creating a blue-ribbon panel to focus on the mental and behavioral health aspects of the COVID pandemic, to better plan for the future
- Speeding up the transition to value-based payments to improve care and save patients money
Click here to read ERIC’s statement for the record.