Seen in the San Francisco Chronicle:
A federal judge’s ruling Wednesday invalidating part of San Francisco’s landmark attempt to extend health care coverage to all uninsured adult residents cast new doubt on the viability of a statewide program for covering the uninsured that is now pending in the Legislature. State attorneys said Thursday that they are studying the ruling, but critics of the sweeping state overhaul said the state plan could be challenged on the same grounds.
Both the city and the state have proposed a similar mandate on employers to provide insurance to their workers or pay part of the cost - a requirement that was struck down in the San Francisco case by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White, who found that the city was intruding into federal regulation of employee benefits.[...]
The requirement [in California's reform legislation] that all employers either provide insurance for their workers or pay into a new state purchasing pool on a sliding scale of 1 percent to 6.5 percent of payroll based on company size is a key funding element of the plan and the one that may provide biggest obstacle to passage in light of White’s ruling, which San Francisco intends to appeal.
ERISA, for those of you not familiar with it, is a federal law that gives the feds sole authority to regulate employer-provided benefits. State laws (and local ordinances) that would seek to attempt to regulate, for example, employer-provided health insurance are completely trumped by federal authority.
ERISA was originally passed in 1974, as part of a federal effort to address a pension crisis at the time, as well as to protect industry from a hodgepodge of differing and frequently conflicting state regs. And, while it was arguably effective at instilling some stability, and even though it has been subsequently improved (e.g., via COBRA and HIPAA)… it probably could use significant updating.
For example, Judge White’s ruling, if it stands, could be interpreted as to put the brakes on state-level efforts to expand health care coverage by involving employers. Personally, I’d prefer that ERISA were opened up to tolerate such measures, as the alternatives (federal involvement and/or single-payer solutions) are rather unpalatable to me.
(If you’re interested in reading more about ERISA, Wikipedia might be able to help.)