ERISA and Employer-Sponsored Health Coverage

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), enacted in 1974, encourages employers to offer health coverage and other benefits to employees by establishing a fair and efficient set of rules for those who do so.  Specifically, ERISA creates uniform federal standards for employer-sponsored benefit plans - including both health and retirement plans - and preempts the application of potentially conflicting or inconsistent state laws to employer-sponsored plans.  Currently, employers voluntarily provide health benefits to 169 million Americans.

The National Coalition on Benefits is united in our support of the following principles:

ERISA's federal framework must be maintained. The federal framework that governs employer-sponsored benefits was enacted in the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) to provide comprehensive federal regulation of employee benefits. This federal framework is what enables employers to provide benefits and therefore must be preserved, even while efforts to address the uninsured are underway at the federal, state and local levels.

To Whom It May Concern:

In response to the request for information published in the Federal Register on April 14, 2010, the National Coalition on Benefits (NCB) appreciates the opportunity to comment on the interim final rules regarding Section 2718 of the Public Health Services Act which was added by Sections 1001 and 10101 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), (Pub. L. 111-148), regarding the medical loss ratio (MLR).

Washington – The National Coalition on Benefits today reiterated its strong support for the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). For more than thirty years, ERISA has provided the framework which has been a cornerstone of the employment-based healthcare system providing coverage for over 130 million Americans. Surveys consistently show that the vast majority of people with employer coverage are satisfied with it and want to keep it. VIEW>

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