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Benefit Plans (benefit + plan)
Selected AbstractsERISA: Health Benefit Plans Discriminating Against ProvidersTHE JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Issue 3 2000Mary Zendran No abstract is available for this article. [source] The Market Value Implications of Post-Retirement Benefit Plans and Plan Surpluses , Canadian EvidenceCANADIAN JOURNAL OF ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES, Issue 3 2004Christine I. Wiedman We examine a sample of Canadian firms with defined benefit pension plans over 2000 and 2001, using note disclosures available for the first time in Canada in 2000, and find the following: On average, Canadian investors appear to view the deficit arising from under-funded plans as a liability of the sponsoring firm, but do not appear to view the surplus arising from over-funded plans as an asset of the firm. This finding is consistent with the legal constraints faced by Canadian firms attempting to withdraw a pension surplus from plans. Additionally, we document that post-retirement benefits other than pensions are largely unfunded in Canada, but are not consistently priced by the market. This latter result may be attributable to lack of investor confidence in the estimation of these liabilities. Our findings on defined benefit pension plans surpluses support current International Accounting Standards Board proposals on applying an asset ceiling test to pension surpluses. Résumé La présente étude utilise les informations annexes disponibles au Canada pour la premiére fois en 2000 pour analyser un échantillon d'entreprises canadiennes dotées, entre 2000 et 2001, de régimes de retraite àA prestations déterminées. L'étude révèle qu'en moyenne, les investisseurs canadiens ont tendance à considérer le déficit résultant des régimes sous-capitalisés comme une responsabilité des firmes promotrices; en revanche. ils refusent de considérer l'excédent résultant des régimes surcapitalisés comme un atout pour ces firmes. Cette attitude est attribuable aux contraintes juridiques auxquelles sont soumises les firmes canadiennes qui essaient de puiser le surplus des caisses de retraites. L'étude démontre que hormis les prestations de retraite, les indemnityés à la retraite manquent cruellement de capitaux au Canada et sont sous-évaluées parle marché. Ce dernier résultat peut être attribué au fait que les investisseurs n'ont pas foi en l'évaluation de leur passif. En ce qui conceme les excédents des régimes de retraites à prestations déterminées, nos conclusions vont dans le même sens que les propositions du Comité international de normalisation de la comptabilité qui recommandent I'application d'un test de plafonnement aux excédents des régimes de pensions. [source] Population Trends in BMD Testing, Treatment, and Hip and Wrist Fracture Rates: Are the Hip Fracture Projections Wrong?JOURNAL OF BONE AND MINERAL RESEARCH, Issue 6 2005Susan B Jaglal PhD Abstract A worldwide epidemic of hip fractures has been predicted. Time trends in BMD testing, bone-sparing medications and hip and wrist fractures in the province of Ontario, Canada, were examined. From 1996 to 2001, BMD testing and use of bone-sparing medications increased each year, whereas despite the aging of the population, wrist and hip fracture rates decreased. Introduction: If patients with osteoporosis are being diagnosed and effective treatments used with increasing frequency in the population, rates of hip and wrist fractures will remain stable or possibly decrease. We report here time trends in BMD testing, prescriptions for bone-sparing medications, hip and wrist fracture rates, and population projections of fracture rates to 2005 in the province of Ontario, Canada. Materials and Methods: Ontario residents have universal access to Medicare. To examine time trends in BMD testing, all physician claims for DXA from 1992 to 2001 were selected from the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) database. Trends in prescribing were examined from 1996 to 2003 using data from the Ontario Drug Benefit plan, which provides coverage to persons ,65 years of age. Actual numbers of hip and wrist fractures were determined for 1992-2000 and population projections for 2001-2005 using time-series analysis. Wrist fractures were identified in the OHIP database and hip fractures through hospital discharge abstracts. Results: From 1992 to 2001, the number of BMD tests increased 10-fold. There has been a steady increase in the number of persons filling prescriptions for antiresorptives (12,298 in 1996 to 225,580 in 2003) and the majority were for etidronate. For women, the rate of decline for wrist fractures is greater than that for hip fractures. The rate of hip fracture was fairly constant around 41 per 10,000 women ,50 years between 1992 and 1996. In 1997, the hip fracture rate began to decrease, and the population projections suggest that this downward trend will continue to a rate of 33.1 per 10,000 in 2005. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that fracture rates may be on the decline, despite the aging of the population, because of increased patterns of diagnosis and treatment for osteoporosis. [source] A comparative study of the relationship between pension plans and individual savings in Asian countries from an institutional point of viewINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WELFARE, Issue 4 2010Mann Hyung Hur Hur MH. A comparative study of the relationship between pension plans and individual savings in Asian countries from an institutional point of view Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 379,389 © 2009 The Author, Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. This study identifies various saving plans used as alternative pension plans in Asian countries and examines the extent to which these saving plans contribute to their pension schemes. Data were collected from six Asian countries: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. The comparison concentrates on an examination of differences and similarities in individual countries' privately managed pension schemes and saving plans. This study suggests that a pension system does not have to be a privately managed plan to encourage individual savings. A critical point for individual savings was avoiding a defined benefit plan. On the basis of these findings, a typology of relationships between second and third pillars and provident funds and incentive systems for individual savings was developed. [source] Rate of return guarantees for mandatory defined contribution plansINTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SECURITY REVIEW, Issue 4 2001John A. Turner Many mandatory defined contribution systems provide a rate of return guarantee. The guarantees provided have generally been backed by a sequential combination of two or more of six different financing sources. Those sources are (1) reserve funds established within the pension fund, using investment earnings on the fund; (2) reserve funds established using funds provided by the owners of the pension fund management companies; (3) a defined benefit plan associated with the defined contribution plan; (4) central guarantee funds financed by contributions from pension funds; (5) funds provided by employers; and (6) the government. Nearly all the guarantees are first backed by a limited liability guarantee derived from investment earnings that would otherwise accrue to workers. In some instances, the guarantee may be funded by employers. Then they are backed by a guarantee financed by capital market institutions , pension fund managers directly or a central guarantee fund. Lastly, they are backed by an unfunded governmental guarantee with unlimited liability that is contingent on the insufficiency of private sector guarantees. [source] Creating Value Through Corporate GovernanceCORPORATE GOVERNANCE, Issue 3 2002Robert A.G. Monks Value and governance are such familiar words that we do not often enough reflect on their meanings in a specific situation. This paper will suggest: Value is in the eye of the beholder. The appearance of governance may be preferable to the real thing. In order better to understand value, we will work with a simple question , is it appropriate for a global investor to purchase common shares in Volkswagen? There are many kinds of shareholder, each with distinctive interests that are not always compatible with the interests of the other investors. A global investor is typically the trustee of a pension plan with the simple obligation to collateralise the pension promise by maximising the long,term value of trust assets. The beneficiaries of pension funds are not rich people. Fluctuations in market values are no longer primarily a question as to whether rich people are a bit richer or poorer, they are a question as to whether pensions will be paid to the roughly half of the population of the OECD world who have interests in employee benefit plans. This makes investment a matter of social and political concern. At the end of our trip through the mythology and prospects for adding value to corporate enterprises through effective governance, we come to a very simple conclusion. I bastardise a celebrated principal of physics to conclude that both in science and in business a watched particle behaves differently than one that is not watched. "An observed board behaves differently" and is more likely to generate value for corporate owners. [source] Estimating the price elasticity of expenditure for prescription drugs in the presence of non-linear price schedules: an illustration from Quebec, CanadaHEALTH ECONOMICS, Issue 9 2005Paul Contoyannis Abstract The price elasticity of demand for prescription drugs is a crucial parameter of interest in designing pharmaceutical benefit plans. Estimating the elasticity using micro-data, however, is challenging because insurance coverage that includes deductibles, co-insurance provisions and maximum expenditure limits create a non-linear price schedule, making price endogenous (a function of drug consumption). In this paper we exploit an exogenous change in cost-sharing within the Quebec (Canada) public Pharmacare program to estimate the price elasticity of expenditure for drugs using IV methods. This approach corrects for the endogeneity of price and incorporates the concept of a ,rational' consumer who factors into consumption decisions the price they expect to face at the margin given their expected needs. The IV method is adapted from an approach developed in the public finance literature used to estimate income responses to changes in tax schedules. The instrument is based on the price an individual would face under the new cost-sharing policy if their consumption remained at the pre-policy level. Our preferred specification leads to expenditure elasticities that are in the low range of previous estimates (between ,0.12 and ,0.16). Naïve OLS estimates are between 1 and 4 times these magnitudes. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Controlling pension costs: Why is it so difficult?JOURNAL OF CORPORATE ACCOUNTING & FINANCE, Issue 3 2006Jon Duchac Companies continue to struggle with the ballooning costs of defined pension benefit plans. The authors explain why this is such a tough task. And although regulatory reforms may be coming soon, they could have unanticipated consequences,making it even more difficult to manage costs. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] | ||||||||||||||||