Employee Benefits Final Chapters 1-12
In 2015, on average, employers spent how much annually per employee to provide life insurance coverage?
$83
What is the amount of contribution employer and employees must make to the Medicare tax which supports Medicare Part A?
1.45%
To qualify as a group term life insurance policy, it must insure at least how many full-time employees?
10
The FMLA permits employees which of the following?
12 work weeks of unpaid leave during any 12 month period
Prime-age workers are in what age group?
30-54
Benefits accounted for what percentage of total compensation costs in the private sector?
30.30%
Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, employers with at least ________ employees are required to offer affordable health insurance to full-time employees.
50
Most short-term disability insurance plans pay employees around how much of their regular pay?
50 - 67%
Most long-term disability insurance plans pay how much after a waiting period of how long?
50 - 70% after 6 - 12 months
After an injury, claims to workers' compensation for rehabilitative services usually have to be submitted in what time frame?
6-24 months
In 2015, private industry employer costs for paid leave benefits was ________ of total compensation.
6.90%
At what age are retirees first eligible for Social Security benefits?
62
US companies offered life insurance to what percentage full time employees in 2015?
72%
In 2015, what percentage of full-time and part-time employees received employer-sponsored life insurance?
72% full-time, 13% part-time
Which of the following is not one of three methods states use to calculate weekly unemployment benefit amounts?
A percentage of the average monthly wages earned during the base period.
What is medical underwriting?
A process where employees provide their past medical history to insurers
Which of the following can be avoided by using experience ratings?
Adverse selection
Which two are the possible approaches that can be used in strategic benefit planning?
Backing in and top-down approaches
Which of the following are considered the 5 core compensation adjustment elements?
COLAS, seniority pay, merit pay, incentive pay and person focused pay
These types of insurance plans are set up to cover things like dental care, vision care and prescription drugs
Carve-out plans
Flexible benefits allows employees to do which of the following?
Choose which benefits they want and at what level
Which of the followng laws does not mandate legally required emplyee benefits?
Civil Rights Act
Under the Equal Pay Act of 1963, what are skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions referred to as?
Compensable factors
Which of the following are the 3 main types of retirement programs that companies can offer?
Defined contribution plans, defined benefits plans, hybrid plans
These are the three main types of dental plans.
Dental fee-for-service, dental service corporations, dental maintenance organizations
Being able to spread the administrative costs to larger groups of employees, to reduce the health insurance cost per employee, is referred to as what?
Economies of scale
Which common feature of a benefit plan allows companies to limit benefits particiaption to current employees?
Eligibility provisions
In short-term disability insurance plans, this term refers to the minimum amount of time an employee must wait after becoming disabled before disability insurance payments begin.
Elimnation period
Which of the following statements about employee attitudes and employee benefits is correct?
Employee benefits can be both implicit and explicit
Roth 401(k) plans differ from 401(k) plans in which two ways?
Employee contributions are taxed at the individual's tax rate, upon retirement employee withdrawals are not taxed
Which of the following is a tax benefit associated with 401(k) plans?
Employees do not pay taxes on their contributions
According to ADA guidelines, which of the following is true?
Employers cannot exclude qualified employees with disabilities from participating in its' disability retirement plans
What are the three main reasons that employers offer discretionary benefits?
Employers have a cost advantage, the benefits help in recruiting and retaining workers and the company gets tax incentives to offer them
Self-inflicted wounds and drug dependency are generally considered as what in most short-term disability insurance plans?
Exclusion provisions
Information for strategic benefits planning comes from these two environments
External market and internal company
The average benefit test is a method for determining participation requirements.
FALSE
Determining whether jobs are exempt from the FLSA overtime pay provision has become even more complex since the U.S. Department of Labor introduced revised guidelines, known as the:
Fair pay rules
The federal government funds the Social Security Old-Age, Survivor and Disability Insurance Program using which tax?
Federal Insurance Contributions Act- FICA
What are the 4 main classes of health insurance programs that employers have to choose from to offer its' employees?
Fee for service plans, alternative managed care plans, point of service plans, consumer driven plans
These types of insurance plans provide protection against health care expenses in the form of cash benefits paid to the insured or directly to the provider after the services are rendered.
Fee-for-service plans
Companies can choose from which of the following ways to provide health-care coverage?
Fee-for-service plans, alternative managed care plans, consumer-driven health care plans
A person with this title manages employee benefits plans and pension plan funds to ensure the welfare of participants and beneficiaries while defraying reasonable plan expenses.
Fiduciary
This consumer-driven health care option allows employees to contribute pre-tax wages annually to pay for qualified medical expenses, but they will lose the balance not used at year's end.
Flexible spending Accounts
Employer choice of discretionary benefits does not depend on
Government mandates
What are the three common forms of managed care plans?
Health maintenance organizations, preferred provider organizations, point-of-service plans
Which of the following are not covered by Medicare Part B?
Hospitalization
Profit sharing payments are examples of which type of core compensation package?
Incentive pay
In which social context were workers' compensation laws enacted?
Industrial expansion in the early 1900s
Which of the following is not closely associated with the nature of transactional psychological contracts?
Long term relationship
Retirement benefits are generally distributed in one of these three ways.
Lumps sums, annuities, periodic payments
Under NLRA, subjects for collective bargaining fall into one of which three categories?
Mandatory, permissive, illegal
This prescription drug plan is usually associated with indemnity plans, pays benefits after the employee has met the deductible and tends to charge the most for filling the prescriptions.
Medical reimbursement plan
Which of the following Medicare coverage would cover physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech-language therapy ordered by a doctor?
Medicare Part A
This Medicare program offers voluntary supplemental medical insurance.
Medicare Part B
Which Medicare program provides beneficiaries the opportunity to receive health care from a variety of options?
Medicare Part C: Advantage
The FLSA of 1938, contains provisions concerning which three topics?
Minimum wage, overtime pay, child labor
These indicate yearly probabilities of death based on such factors as age and sex
Mortality tables
This federal law was established to regulate the establishment and implementation of discretionary benefits practices.
NLRA
This law sets minimum standards for the length of hospital stays for mothers and newborns.
Newborns' and Mothers' Health Protection Act
Companies can generally choose from which 4 programs for financing their discretionary benefit plans?
Noncontributory, contributory, employee financed, a combination of all three
What is the 3% rule used to determine?
Nondiscrimination in defined benefits plans
Which of the following is a mandatory collective bargaining subject?
Paid time-off
What is an insurance pool?
People who join together to by a group insurance policy
If an employee suffers a disability that limits the kind of work an individual can perform on an enduring basis, she would qualify for what type of disability income under workers' compensation?
Permanent partial disability
Which of the following adjustments to core compensation reqards employees for acquiring new knowledge and skills through designated curricula sponsored by an emoployer?
Person focused pay
Which 3 are the 3 fundamental roles that characterize discretionary benefits?
Protection programs, PTO, and accommodation and enhancement programs
What are the two basic causes for psychological contract violations?
Reneging and incongruence
Which of the following is the state unemployment tax?
SUTA
There are three possible contribution sources for defined contribution plans. Which of the following is not one of those sources?
Social Security integration
Employers can take tax deductions on qualified plans.
TRUE
This type of hybrid plan is based on income and years of service, uses individual accounts, passes the IRS's cross-testing rules and the total benefits are based on the investment performance of the plan's assets.
Target benefit plan
The 1331/3 % rule refers to what?
The annual accrual rate for defined benefits plans
What is coinsurance?
The percentage of covered expenses paid by the insured
Which of the following is not true of the Cadillac tax?
The tax will equal 60% of the amount that exceeds certain stated limits.
In insurance terms, what does adverse selection refer to?
The tendency of an insurance pool to disproportionately attract "bad risk" employees and discourage "good risk" employees
This equal employment opportunity law prohibits illegal discrimination against protected class individuals in employment.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
To qualify as a nondiscriminating defined contribution plan, it must meet which two safe harbors?
Uniform allocation formula or uniform points allocation formula
What's it called when an employer intentionally fails to reveal the exposure of a worker to harmful substances?
Violation of an affirmative duty
Which of the following statements is not true of holiday time-off practices?
When holidays fall on a weekend day, the employee receives two days of holiday pay.
This federal law requires group health plans to provide medical and surgical benefits for mastectomies.
Women's Health and Cancer Rights Act
The Social Security Administration defines "gainful" work activity as all of the following, except:
Work performed full-time.
Which of the following statements is true when comparing workers' compensation with Social Security disability and survivors' benefits?
Worker's compensation pays for medical care for work-related injuries.
Which of the following is NOT an example of a descretionary benefit?
Workers' compensation
Which 2 make up the interal environment factors?
Workforce demographics and collective bargaining agreements
Which of the following employee benefits is more relevant for relational psychological contracts?
accomodation and enhancement benefits
The state unemployment employer tax rate varies according to ________ system.
an experience rating
Which one of these is not a defined contribution plan?
cash balance plans
Which of the following is not an example of an accommodation and enhancement program?
disability insurance
Which of the following is not one of the factors believed to have hastened the deterioration of the OASDI and Medicare trust funds?
increased insurance claims
Which of the following is not a fundamental employee goal?
leadership
ERISA, Title I, contains provisions for all of the following, except:
mandatory bargaining subjects.
Health care premiums are quite high, often amounting to as much as ________ of annual benefits costs.
one-half ( 1/2)
This is a mental or physical disability for which medical advice, diagnosis, care or treatment was received, during a designated period preceding the beginning of disability insurance coverage.
preexisting condition
Discretionary benefits can be categorized into programs that
protect health and income, allow for paid time-off, provide accommodation and enhancement benefits
Which of the following employee benefit might fulfill both transactional and relational expectations of employees?
retirement
This paid time-off policy is generally used by employees for professional development activities.
sabbatical leave
Which of the following is not a hybrid plan?
stock options
This term refers to an unfunded deferred compensation plans for a select group of highly compensated employees?
top hat plan
Which of the following is NOT one of the fundamental roles characterizing benefits programs?
total compensation
The degree to which an increase in benefit costs is passed along to employees in the form of lower cash wages generally does NOT depend on which of the following factors?
whether or not the employee is a manager