Repealing Erisa

The worst thing that can be said about the House health bill is what’s in it. Presumably that explains why Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office zapped as “false and misleading” one of our recent editorials—on the 1974 federal law known as Erisa that lets large businesses offer insurance with minimal government interference. Among the rebuttals is the “fact” that Democrats will give “all American families more choices of quality, affordable health care.”

Although this editorial adddresses someting that's basically human resources attornies' and professionals' inside baseball, the issue is really vital because it shows how Obama is trying to destroy private emloyer provided health plans while he says he's not.

The Employee Retirement Income Secrurity Act of 1974 (ERISA) regulates the establishment and operation of all employer benefit plans, including health plans. As far as health plans are concerned, it basically allows employers to establish whatever plans they want to, prevents states from regulating those plans, and makes it very hard for disgruntled employees to sue their employers over benefit denials. All of this has encouraged employers to establish a myriad of innovative plans that satisfy their empoyees' health needs without breaking the bank, including health savings accounts coupled with catastrophic insurance. The ERISA repeal will eliminate all of those plans, cause benefit coverage to be subject to a host of Federal mandates, and eliminate the discouragement of employee lawsuits.

A rational employer, faced with that horror, will promptly, as intended by Obama, dump all of its emloyee health care onto the taxpayers, meaning its employees will inevitably get far less for far more.

Be Afraid. Many Major Corporations self-insure their health plans and let a vendor manage the paperwork. They also provide information and encourage employees to proactively maintain their own health. For overseas locations, the company would offer enhanced benefits so an employee can get his hernia repaired, cancer treated, or heart worked on in a timely fashion, rather than queuing up in say the British system, and waiting for treatment.

I think these companies’ strategy was to figure out a way to provide today’s benefits if this thing were to pass. If this passes, US employees will not be allowed to have adequate treatment.

Find an Indian Doctor with contacts in Mumbai and keep your bags packed.

That’s similar to what I had heard from some colleagues in the energy industry working in the former Soviet Union. If they got sick, they were to get themselves to Helsinki straightaway.

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