Crazy Quilt. Credit: Charlotte Winter/National Gallery of Art
A group that represents employers with self-insured benefit plans is fighting two new state efforts related to self-insured health plans.
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 preempts state efforts to self-insured plans, and the ERISA Industry Group — ERIC — is continuing to fend off any initiatives that might nibble away at ERISA preemption and lead to the creation of a crazy quilt of state benefits rules.
Recommended For You
ERIC has filed a brief asking the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee to stop enforcement of a Tennessee law that requires a prescription plan to include any pharmacy willing to accept its network terms in its pharmacy network.
The Washington-based group has also written a letter to Nikki Majewski, chair for health information technology at the Maryland Health Care Commission, asking Majewski to stop a state data call.
ERIC is trying to keep managers of Maryland's All Payer Claims Database from getting around ERISA preemption by collecting self-insured health plans' claims data from the electronic health networks that serve the plans, rather than directly from the plans.
ERIC argues in the brief filed in connection with the Tennessee case, McKee Foods Corp. v. BFP, that enforcing the Tennessee "any willing pharmacy" law would hurt employers' efforts to hold down costs.
"While ERIC supports federal legislation to reform pharmacy benefit managers, the Tennessee law interferes with employers' ability to design and administer plans that reflect the needs of their workforce," according to Tom Christina, the executive director of the ERIC Legal Center.
In the letter sent to Majewski, Dillon Clair, director for state advocacy at ERIC, cites language in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual, to support the idea that allowing even an indirect ERISA plan data collection mandate would violate ERISA preemption.
Related: This was a consequential Supreme Court term for employers
The court stated in the Gobeille ruling that "the Secretary of Labor, not the States, is authorized to administer the reporting requirements of plans governed by ERISA."
Maryland is trying to get ERISA-protected data that the plans own from the electronic health networks, and requiring the networks to provide self-insured plan data could force the networks to violate the terms of contracts with the self-insured plans, Dillon says.
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
