Easier to E-Verify

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is making it easier to use the E-Verify employment verification system. E-Verify is an automated Internet-based system for employers to run employment authorization checks against Department of Homeland Security and Social Security databases. E-Verify usually confirms within 24 hours if an employee is authorized to work in the United States.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has added naturalization data to the system, which will help to confirm the citizenship status of naturalized U.S. citizens. E-Verify also will include real-time arrival data from the U.S. border inspection system, which will reduce inaccurate information for newly arrived workers.

More than 64,000 employers currently use E-Verify, which handles employment authorization checks for about 1,000 new employees a week.

E-Verify is voluntary for all employers, except for some federal government employers and violators of certain immigration laws. As a participant in E-Verify, employers are required to verify all newly hired employees, both U.S. citizens and noncitizens. Employers may not verify selectively, and must verify all new hires while participating in the program. E-Verify may not be used to prescreen applicants for employment.

-- Joel Pfeffer, Meyer Unkovic & Scott
jp@muslaw.com

Dental and vision benefits

Adding coverage may appear to be an odd way to contain the cost of providing employee benefits. In the case of dental and vision plans, however, adding the benefit actually can help a small or midsize company contain health-care costs.

Dental and vision benefits are inexpensive, typically costing one-tenth that of medical benefits. More significantly, the cost of dental and vision plans are relatively immune to the great leaps that medical plan costs have seen over the past few decades.

The basic premise of dental and vision coverage keeps the cost down. Many medical plans trigger benefits only at the onset of illness. Because dental and many vision plans cover routine and preventive maintenance, they can help deter more critical, and expensive, treatments.

In addition, the dental and vision fields have not seen the same proliferation of extensive technology as the medical industry has, another factor keeping dental and vision coverage costs down.

Some dental plans have begun to offer oral cancer screenings and prenatal cancer care, while some vision plans now provide comprehensive vision exams that can identify diabetes and other medical conditions.

Dental and vision plans are popular with employees, who often utilize them more often than medical plans.

If packaged in an appealing and cost-effective manner, dental benefits can thus help sell employees on health-care savings accounts, flexible spending accounts, cafeteria plans and other programs to contain or shift the cost burden.

-- Stephanie Bernaciak-Massaro, UnitedHealthcare
svbernaciak@uhc.com