Benefits & ERISA Law

Preemption, the Supreme Court, and Job Losses

I had two disparate items that I wanted to post on, one of which I didn't really think had anything to do with the subject matters of this blog but that, nonetheless, was too cool a graphic not to pass on. Sitting here this morning, though, I figured out how to hook them together, so here goes. The first is the report, which many of you have heard by now, that the Supreme Court has sought the government's views on whether to accept cert with regard to the Ninth Circuit's ruling on preemption and the San Francisco health insurance mandate. I can throw out two, or actually three, quick thoughts on that one. First, dollars to donuts says the government's advice is to not grant cert, and to wait and see whether federal health care reform either directly or in a de facto manner moots the entire question. Second, the reality is that, under current doctrines, that statute is preempted; the Supreme Court doesn't necessarily have to overturn any precedents to find otherwise, but it is going to have to shift the analyses of the preemption case law to find that this statute is not preempted. Third, I can't say - as one who has watched the questionable implementation in Massachusetts of its state legislated, and presumptively preempted, employer mandate - that I agree with those who think that preemption should be set aside to allow states to become bastions of experimentation on health insurance reform; anyone who has followed my posts on the Massachusetts statute knows I don't think the states have the pocketbook or the firepower to handle the issue successfully.

What was the second item, the one that wasn't clearly on point to this blog? Its this graphic representation of job losses and gains throughout the business cycle for different metropolitan locations across the country, a link I have shamelessly pirated this morning from the Workplace Prof blog. My first response to it was that I loved the graphical representation of complex data; it's the same thing a trial lawyer has to do in a case of any level of complication, which is make the background information understandable, and this graphic does that beautifully. Trial graphics in particular have to serve this purpose, and this graphic could be the exemplar of exactly what computer generated graphics for trial should be: easily understandable and visually interesting representations of what otherwise would be difficult to grasp or, at best, tedious to follow information. But how do I link this graphic to this blog post? Easy, by using it like a trial graphic to make a point. If you move the time line to 2009 on the graphic, you will see the massive amounts of job losses - there is no better illustration of the point I have made time and again about employer mandates, which is that employers have enough on their plates without being made the official provider of health insurance (they have long been the unofficial one, but employer mandates push that responsibility even further). Employers should create jobs, not spend their time worrying about the costs and administrative burdens of legislated mandates such as the San Francisco ordinance or the Massachusetts Health Care Reform Act - this, in fact, may be the most concise justification for preemption of such acts I can think of.

Full post as published by Boston ERISA Law Blog on October 13, 2009 (boomark / email).