DOL proposes extending e-delivery rules to group health plans

The Labor Department has proposed extending its electronic-delivery framework to group health plans, building on the e-delivery rule it wrote for retirement plans in 2020. Groom Law principal Lisa Campbell told Law360 the proposal “seems like a good step forward for electronic disclosure.”

The 2020 rule did not apply to group health plans, and Campbell said that created “a lot of disappointment” among stakeholders. They had hoped the new proposal would closely mirror the retirement plan framework, according to Groom’s summary of the Law360 article.

Campbell, as summarized by Groom, expects the proposal to bring similar efficiencies to group health plans. For advisers who work with plan sponsors, the practical appeal is uniformity: the systems and workflows built for retirement plan e-delivery could serve the health plan side too, so an employer runs one e-delivery operation instead of two. On the retirement side, those systems were a new cost and a new discipline when the 2020 rule landed; reusing them for health plans would spread that cost over a wider base.

Whether the new proposal actually mirrors the retirement framework is not shown in the Groom brief, which quotes Campbell but does not reproduce the proposal’s terms. What is on the record is Law360’s headline, “DOL E-Delivery Push Pleases Mgmt. And Worker Attys Alike.” An ERISA rule that both sides of the bar welcome publicly is uncommon; management and worker attorneys usually square off when disclosure rules change.

The next thing to watch is the final rule’s text: whether it mirrors the retirement framework or shaves off pieces for the health plan context. If the final rule matches the framework, benefits advisers get a ready efficiency story for clients. If it does not, they keep running two disclosure tracks.