CAPITALAND ROUND TABLE COMPLEXITY, COST OF MEDICAL BENEFITS GETS ATTENTION.(CAPITALAND REPORT)

Medical benefit programs have been getting so complex and so costly that many businesses are making drastic revisions in their programs and Congress is reviewing plans for even more changes. Following is a discussion from the round table discussion that highlighs some issues.

DAVID A. PRATT, lawyer, benefits administrator: When I started doing benefits work in 1976, there was one particular section of the law that said basically you cannot discriminate in the retirement plan. That has been in the law since about 1942. Everyone basically knew what it meant.

We now have 300 pages of regulations, no new statutes, but 300 pages of regulations to tell us what that rule means - and they are impossible to decipher.

PAPIERNIK: You're refering to the discrimination between higher paid and lower paid …