depressedHow do I always get blackmailed into making phone calls?
Normally it's my mother with the "If you call X then I'll call Y..." today it's hoppie.
But fine. I poked around at the Mass insurance website, didn't find any additional information and so I called.
The guy I spoke to listened to my story...foreign HQ company, non-local insurance company, MA law looked at the law, which we noticed was written for domestic companies only, and sent me to the Department of Labor (gerk!).
So I called and spoke to a guy at the Department of Labor who says that there are a lot of variables that control whether or not they'd be required to follow the MA requirements. First, he said, chances are very good, it's not an "foreign" company. They almost certainly run their US operations out of subsidiary company. (Which of course, now that he's said that, they totally do.) So having removed the foreign/domestic issue, it still may not help me because the real question is:
1) Is the policy self-insured (in which case it would absolutely not be subject to MA law)
2) Is the policy insured by the insurance company in which case, it's not clear whether it's subject to MA law or not.
The federal requirements for insurance are pretty minimal, so it's quite likely they don't have to conform to state standards to operate in the state. He offered to send me back to the state insurance/attorney general's office, and it may yet come to that.
I sent email to our HR, I HEART our HR department, and got a reply back pretty quick. We are not self-insured, so there's still a chance. Hoppie says his company IS self-insured, so it's as well we get our benefits through mine. Also, HR said they are still working the issue through their insurance broker, so, we'll see.