On the day of March 1, 2016, the Supreme Court decided the case of Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. The matter before the Court included a Vermont law needing certain entities, involving health insurers, to report payments regarding to healthcare claims and other data relating to healthcare services to a state agency for compilation in an all-inclusive healthcare database.
The case was brought by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company’s self-funded, self-insured health plan, which offers benefits in all 50 states and is not subject to regulation by Vermont, and the Court invalidated the statute.
This decision is proving more controversial in health policy circles, where transparency is observed as a public policy attribute that should be extended, than it is in legal circles where the matter is seen as one of legislative jurisdiction that potentially is subject to change by uniform federal executive branch action or congressional legislation.
In a significant victory for preemption advocates, the Court arranged that this law was preempted by The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), which expressly preempts “any and all State laws insofar as they may now or hereafter regard to any employee benefit policy.” And that involves any state law that has impermissible “connection with” ERISA plans, i.e., a law that governs, or interferes with the uniformity of, plan administration.
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