Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., 2016 U.S. LEXIS 1612, underscored the broad extent to which the preemption language of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), as amended, covers the field with respect to state law health care reporting requirements as applied impermissibly to an ERISA - governed, self-insured health plan. The Court affirmed that preemption is necessary to protect ERISA plan sponsors from having to comply with overly burdensome and varying state and local regulations.

Under the facts of Gobeille, Vermont (like several other states, including Connecticut and Massachusetts) had implemented a regulatory requirement for health insurers (including self-insured health plans), health care providers, health care facilities, and governmental agencies to report information regarding, among other things, health care costs, prices, quality, utilization, health insurance claims, and enrollment. Noncompliant entities could be fined for failure to abide by the state’s law. Concerned that disclosing certain confidential information would constitute a fiduciary breach under ERISA, Liberty Mutual Insurance Company (Liberty), the sponsor of a self - insured health plan subject to ERISA, instructed its third - party administrator not to comply with Vermont’s reporting requirements and sought a declaration in federal court that ERISA preempted Vermont’s reporting rules.