Benefits December 22, 2004

NFL Players to Look for Lifetime Health Care Coverage

December 22, 2004 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - National Football League players are asking their union to get them lifetime health care benefits in their next contract.
Reported by

Bloomberg reported that with the league’s collective bargaining agreement set to expire in 2008, post-retirement health care has come to the forefront of player demands. The league wants to have a new agreement in place by February.

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This is not surprising, since career-ending injuries are up 20% from only four years ago, Bloomberg reported. NFL players are the lowest paid of all four major sports league players – pulling in an average of $1.3 million annually – and are concerned about paying medical bills that could last a lifetime. Currently, players who spend three years in the NFL receive medical and dental insurance for five years after retirement, according to Bloomberg. The three other large leagues do not offer such care.

The player’s union, led by executive director Gene Upshaw, has the approach of getting more compensation, then delivering health care to union members. “The bottom line is that the league is making a lot of money,'” Ryan Kuehl, a player representative for the New York Giants, told Bloomberg. “Let’s send our guys into retirement with the confidence that if they need a new knee or hip, they won’t have to mortgage their homes to pay for it.”

League representative Harold Henderson opposes such a strategy, instead saying that money should be shifted from salaries to health care coverage. He does not want the total amount going to players to increase from its current level of 65% of teams’ total revenue, according to Bloomberg.

Products December 21, 2004

SunGard, ProNvest Unveil Automatic Rollover Service

December 21, 2004 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - SunGard Employee Benefit Systems has unveiled an automated rollover product with ProNvest, to help plan sponsors fulfill the ERISA requirement to provide a Safe Harbor for former employees' retirement assets.
Reported by

ProNvest, as an extension of its advice and managed account services, receives notification of the rollover event, documents the balance and source of all funds and creates the rollover transaction, according to a news release. ProNvest will execute the discretionary rollover into an IRA account.   ProNvest will provide all information to open the account and facilitate the transfer of the account from the qualified plan to an appropriate Safe Harbor instrument, the announcement said.

This rollover is available to all SunGard ASP and full service customers as an integrated module of OmniOnline, and is also offered as a licensed solution for OmniPlus and Relius Administration, the news release said.

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Starting March 28, 2005, plan sponsors with qualified retirement plans, 401(k) plans, 403(b) plans, or 457(b) plans, will be required to roll over involuntary cash-out distributions worth more than $1,000 but no more than $5,000, rather than making a taxable distribution directly to the participant.  

More information about ProNvest is at Inc. at  www.pronvest.com . More information about SunGard Employee Benefit Systems www.sungard.com/ebs/ .

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