For over 50 years, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) has served as the foundation around which employer benefit plans are built.
That foundation, however, has shown cracks in recent years as the cost of healthcare continues to rise and many states try to take regulatory matters into their own hands.
From Alabama to California, state houses have passed legislation intent on keeping pharmaceutical costs in check. Many of these laws are being challenged in the courts.
How those cases play out could mean change and greater complexity in the ways that employers manage health and welfare benefits.
As this article explains, questioning ERISA preemption on the state and local levels isn’t new. But the number of challenges, and the intensity of those challenges, have grown in recent years. For employers to understand the current regulatory environment, it helps to understand how ERISA preemption has evolved over the years and where it stands today.
