Benefits & ERISA Law

Some Notes on Fair Share Acts and the Economics of Health Insurance

I have argued many times on these - virtual - pages that fair share acts, and their backers’ obsession with trying to circumvent ERISA preemption, puts the cart before the horse, in that they focus on putting more health insurance obligations on employers without addressing the real reasons that employers struggle to provide health insurance, which is its ever expanding cost. Stories like this one here make me think that I have understated the case, and that demanding more insurance out of employers, without tackling the cost problem first, isn’t just putting the cart before the horse, but is actually just plain wrong headed, and bordering on the willfully obtuse (not to put too fine a point on it). It is all well and good to insist that everyone should have health insurance and access to health care, but simply blindly assuming that employers can pay for it is a mistaken premise that sits at the base of all fair share acts. It is cost that is driving the access and uninsured problem, an issue that is not addressed to any real degree by fair share acts, including the one in Massachusetts and the San Francisco version that has so far managed to survive preemption challenges.

Full post as published by Boston ERISA Law Blog on February 03, 2009 (boomark / email).