Alegeus Announces Immediate Support for HRA Revisions Under the 21st Century Cures Act
Published on December 13th, 2016
Alegeus, the market leader in consumer-directed healthcare (CDH) solutions, announced its ability to immediately support the HRA revisions enacted today by President Obama under the 21st Century Cures Act. With overwhelming bipartisan support, eligible small employers will now be able to offer and fund Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs) for their employees – expanding the HRA market to include 10 million small businesses that have not been able to offer an HRA since the enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Employees of these small businesses will be able to use their employer-funded HRA dollars to pay for qualified medical expenses, including their health insurance premiums.
This provision effectively overturns Department of Labor and IRS guidance that currently prevents some employers from funding employee HRAs because the arrangements were found to violate the ACA insurance market reform. The agency guidance will still prohibit these arrangements for large employers.
This is a real win across the board; a true step forward,” said Steven Auerbach, Alegeus CEO. “Small businesses will have greater flexibility to provide healthcare benefits, and consumers will have a better healthcare experience. This is a tremendous benefit.
Alegeus offers the industry’s most comprehensive and widely used CDH platform – powering nearly 40 percent of the industry’s account-based programs (including FSAs, HSAs, HRAs) and benefit debit cards. Unlike solutions that must rely upon and integrate with third-party technologies, Alegeus customers will be immediately ready to support the HRA provisions. Because the Alegeus platform is a single system end-to-end, the company can easily accommodate these new plan designs – leveraging the capability to apply any card payment rule to any benefit account offering.
Our job is to empower our clients with the agility to quickly respond to an always-evolving market landscape,” said Auerbach. “We strongly supported the 21st Century Cures Act because we see the impact the changes will have on employers, consumers and the healthcare market at large.
About Alegeus
With more than 25 years of growth and innovation, Alegeus is the market leader in SaaS-based healthcare payment solutions. Our highly flexible, white-label platform powers account-based benefit programs such as HSAs, FSAs, HRAs, COBRA, wellness incentives, lifestyle benefits and beyond. We deliver exceptional user experiences and differentiated capabilities that help our partners strengthen their product offerings, operate more efficiently, and unlock their full growth potential. Our partnerships with the industry’s leading health plans, third-party administrators, financial services and benefit solution providers give Alegeus unparalleled reach in the market. And our unique partnership model empowers our clients to achieve outsized results – growing their programs at a rate that is 2-3X the market, and with the highest net promoter scores (NPS) in the industry. We never compete with our clients – we win when they win. Alegeus is headquartered in Waltham, Mass., with operations centers in Orlando and Bangalore, and a large remote workforce.