It seems fitting, then, that BenefitsPro should launch at the one-year anniversary of the signing of health care reform into law. For some of you, PPACA must have been a welcome event. For others, it would be difficult to understate your antipathy for this rather unwieldy piece of legislation. For all of you, PPACA is going to dramatically impact the way you do your jobs. BenefitsPro will be covering PPACA implementation very closely, keeping you up to date on the latest news and what it will mean.

There's also that little retirement savings crisis looming in the national background. Actually, "crisis" might have been a better word before the recession; "catastrophe" might be a better descriptor after the economic downturn that ravaged employees' retirement savings. BenefitsPro will be offering news, analysis and resources to help you address the employee retirement issue.

Employers, too, are waking up from the recession with a massive hangover and the sneaky suspicion that perhaps the employees still on the payroll have been clinging to their jobs more out of desperation than a misguided sense of loyalty. As the job market starts to pick up and employees have more options, companies better be thinking about how to use their benefits packages to recruit, retain and enhance the productivity of their the best employees. BenefitsPro will assist you in those efforts as well.

These are just a few of the trends that make now a perfect time to launch a site where the primary professional groups responsible for addressing the considerable challenges and opportunities facing the employee benefits industry can come together to address the common challenges they face. Use the comment field below to drop us a line to let us know what you like about this site, what you don't and what you'd like to see in the future. We want BenefitsPro to be your home, too.

Wake up! Your employees are "seething": And speaking of disaffected employees, MetLife's 9^th Annual Study of Employee Benefits Trends made a decent-sized splash this week, covered by media outlets ranging from USA Today to the Wichita Eagle. National Underwriter's Allison Bell gets the award for the most colorful headline. The study's findings that one in three employees hopes to be working elsewhere in the next 12 months lit up the twitosphere earlier this week, as well. (Yes, "twitosphere" is a word. OK, not really, but if "OMG!" made it into the dictionary, then I get to use "twitosphere.") @MuradSShah called the MetLife findings "disturbing," and @legalmediamtrs termed it nothing less than a "morale meltdown." The worst part – according to the study, employers apparently are completely clueless about the disgruntled state of their employees.

Readers, do these findings ring true to you? Are your employees (so long as they're not Wisconsin public workers) organizing to march on you or at least march right out the door?

PPACA turns one: House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., celebrated health reform's first birthday this week by writing an Op-Ed in the Cincinnati Enquirer chronicling the broken promises of Obamacare. (I'm surprised they got an invite to the party, quite frankly. I heard they made little PPACA cry before the birthday candles were even blown out.) Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius phoned in her video birthday card at HealthCare.gov to commemorate the occasion, stating that the past year marks the first time when "patients, not insurers, are in charge of the health care." And while many states are quickly putting into place laws that would supersede a federal mandate, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn is putting health reform into overdrive.

The AARP drew Republican ire this week for its support of health reform. House Republicans scheduled a hearing Friday morning to investigate any conflicts of interest between the organization's insurance business and its advocacy interests.

Meanwhile, one area of the health reform debate that quietly persisted in the background this week was which side of the MLR border agent and broker commissions would fall. This is an issue near and dear to hearts of BenefitsPro readers, as witnessed by the fact that the story on the NAIC's decision to delay a vote on whether to back an agent MLR exemption was the most popular article on BenefitsPro in its inaugural week. A bill that would exempt agents from MLR calculations is still circulating in the House, though EBWiR is not sensing much optimism in the industry for the bill's chances for success. Outside of National Underwriter's Arthur Postal (who seemed to be in three places at once again this week) and The Hartford Courant, the only other group outside the industry paying much attention to the bill was Consumer Watchdog, which vehemently argued that an agent exemption would unfairly raise health insurance premiums for everyone.

Other quick hits from around the web:

• GE plans to cut employee health and retirement benefits despite posting $14.2 billion in profits last year.
• Good link to email your employees or your clients: Forbes blog on small business retirement plans.
• Eye-opening piece on the liability risks associated with the use of social media in the workplace.
• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran interesting companion stories on pensions under water and workers forfeiting salary for benefits.
• Blog watch: Pretty good blog EBWiR stumbled upon this week: Employee Benefits Legal Blog