ERISA Pre-emption and Health Care Reform : A History Lesson

This paper was originally published in EBRI Issue Brief No. 135, March 1993, during the last major debate on health care reform. It was based on a speech delivered by Michael S. Gordon before the George Washington University National Health Policy Forum's conference on "The Role of Federal Standards in Health Systems Reform: How Much Leash Should ERISA Give the States?" held November 18, 1992. Gordon, now deceased, served under the late Sen. Jacob Javits (R-NY) from 1970-1975 as minority counsel for pensions on the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee and assisted in the drafting and enactment of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Now that the issue of national health care reform has been revived as a topic of debate on Capitol Hill - and along with it the issue of ERISA pre-emption of state health insurance regulation - the Employee Benefit Research Institute is reprinting Gordon's article. Now, as then, his observations provide both historical and fresh perspective on the conflicts over ERISA and federal pre-emption. The complete original publication, "Health Care Reform: Managed Competition and Beyond," EBRI Issue Brief No. 135, March 1993, is available online. The PDF for the above title, published in the May 2007 issue of EBRI Notes, also contains the fulltext of another May 2007 EBRI Notes article abstracted on SSRN: "Income of the Elderly Population Age 65 and Over, 2005."