U.S. Chamber Praises EBRI Paper on ERISA Preemption

WASHINGTON, D.C.-The U.S. Chamber of Commerce today affirmed the value of a February issue paper published by the Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI) discussing federal preemption of state law under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).

"There are many problems with the U.S. health care system, and there are many things we need to fix," said Randel K. Johnson, the Chamber's vice president of Labor, Immigration, and Employee Benefits. "However, ERISA preemption has fostered the development of health care plans which cover more than 130 million Americans. The EBRI report makes this fact clear."

ERISA is the federal law that allows self-insured plans to follow only one set of rules and report to the Department of Labor, so that those plans are not subject to a patchwork of conflicting and confusing state, county, and local laws and regulations. ERISA also protects fully-insured plans.

Key findings in the paper include that ERISA was always intended to cover health and pension benefits, ERISA partially protects small businesses, the Supreme Court has repeatedly found that ERISA broadly preempts state laws, and that 18 percent of businesses that currently offer no health benefits likely would provide health insurance to employees if the business enjoyed ERISA's protection from state health care laws.

"EBRI hit the nail on the head - if we do not protect ERISA preemption while reforming our health care system, costs will continue to accelerate and businesses will not be able to continue voluntarily providing coverage to two-thirds of Americans," Johnson added.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the world's largest business federation representing more than three million businesses of every size, sector and region.

The EBRI paper ERISA Pre-emption: Implications for Health Reform and Coverage, can be found at the following link: www.ebri.org/publications/ib/index.cfm?fa=ibDisp&content_id=3879

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