Newsletter

Last month the Benefit Fund Office mailed out a document that contained very important information that each employee and participant of the Plan need to read and understand. The contents of said document was:

All shortage of hours payments for the first calendar quarter of coverage of 2025, are due no later than 12:00 P.M. on Tuesday, December 31st, 2024.

A significant change within the HRA provision of the Health and Benefit Fund was recently announced. If you did not read that notice, or read it earnestly, go back and do so.

Regarding the participants that were identified within that notice, you will be issued new cards.

Fifty percent of all Defined Contribution account holders still have not secured their account at Empower. If you fall into the group that has not taken care of securing their account, you need to get on the ball and take care of this right away. Listed below are three ways in which you can accomplish that.

“E PLURIBUS UNUM”

Ah…, Labor Day. The last hurrah before the seriousness of the fall and winter overtakes us.

Sadly, that is what too many people focus upon around the end of summer. Not sure why that is as the name of the holiday implies that this is a day to celebrate the working American citizen and what they have accomplished.

Since this is the Labor Day edition, we wanted to know what you all considered to be the quintessential work-related song. You know, the song you will not only have on rotation over the long holiday weekend, but the one song you have on more than one play list, but it just happens to be a work themed song.

The general consensus is that if you want to know if you owe a shortage of hours payment or when it’s due, you read the shortage of hours’ notice that the Fund Office mailed out.

However, did you know that there are people who neither read their mail nor open their mail in a timely manner?

Yes.

For those that may have not noticed, Community Healthcare System has rebranded their non-acute location based and/or hospital-based health centers, as well as their Stroke and Rehabilitation center to, …..., drum roll please ……. “Powers Health.”

With that said, Community has reported that their hospital facility, specifically, Community Hospital, St. Mary Medical Center and St Catherine Hospital will not be part of their rebranding initiatives.

1 - The day of a U.S. citizen’s sixty-fifth (65th) birthday month that they become eligible to receive Medicare benefits.

2 – The annual percentage of the Health and Benefit Plans population that lose their HRA debit card privileges for either no substantiation, untimely substantiation or improper substantiation of their debit card usage.

Moises (Mo) Flores, an Empower Retirement Plan Advisor (RPA), will be conducting another round of in-person, one-on-one reviews of DC Plan participants’ investments, retirement plans and/or retirement goals.

By the way, for those of you who have yet to establish either, Mo can assist you in flushing those out.