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Yes, self-insured employer plans are exempt from state law under ERISA. It sucks but the big multi-state corporate lobby doesn't want to have to deal with the patchwork of state laws.

I believe the DOL could fix this via regulation, but doubt they will.

S 1895 Lower Healthcare Costs Act would fix this nationally https://www.natlawreview.com/article/beyond-surprise-billing...

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Loved the link, thank you.

I personally believe, the main way to untangle this mess is to make it indifferent for employers to provide primary care plans and repeal Executive Order 9250 that allows employers to claim exemptions.

They are free to provide any secondary and supplementary plans

It's past the time employers and health insurance are tightly coupled.

It's holding back progress.

Everyone who knows anything about healthcare policy has been on board with decoupling for decades, but the big corporate self-insured plans lobby plus the union lobby plus the loosely-informed general public is too strong.

ACA exchanges set up the infrastructure to decouple in a market-oriented way.

But single-payer would also fix it.

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