Committee lists policy priorities as ERISA marks 50 years

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act is 50 years old this year, and an association that represents the employee interests of large employers announced its 2024 public policy priorities. At the top of the list is implementing transparency, accountability and affordability in health care markets.

The ERISA Industry Committee, or ERIC, will advocate for a suite of legislative and regulatory reforms to enhance the ability of large employers to provide uniform and innovative benefit offerings to their nationwide workforces.

“Large employers operating in multiple states need the consistency and certainty provided by ERISA to ensure that they can offer uniform benefits to employees, their families, and retirees, no matter where they live or work,” said James Gelfand, ERIC president and CEO. “ERIC member companies face an evolving landscape, and ERIC is constantly identifying new opportunities to advance sound policy in Congress, the regulatory agencies, state legislatures, and the courts.”

In addition to ensuring national uniformity in benefit laws, ERIC’s 2024 policy agenda continues to focus on improving employee health, well-being and financial security. The association’s key policy priorities in the ERISA 50th anniversary year include:

• Implement transparency and accountability in health care markets. Employers can use price and quality information from across the continuum of health care stakeholders to change the incentives in the health care system for both patients and providers. But this requires legislative and regulatory change.
• Balance health care treatments, products, and care innovations with market competition. ERIC supports the ability of innovator companies to invent new health care options for patients. At the same time, new products and treatments will not benefit patients if they are unaffordable and never face market competition.
• Create an environment that encourages “smart shopping” by patients. ERIC believes that improvements to consumer-directed health plan rules, including account-based plans, can encourage patients to seek better value and quality when making choices about health care.
• Ensure health care markets are competitive. Supporting changes that would reduce consolidation (especially of hospital systems and physician practices), increase choices for patients, address existing monopolies (such as those held by kidney dialysis companies), and prohibit anticompetitive contracting practices often used by providers to thwart value-driven plan designs.
• Improve employer flexibility and reduce administrative burdens. ERIC supports policy changes that reduce rules and burdens on employers, promote innovation, streamline reporting and compliance, and reduce spending on red tape.
• Promote digital health and innovation to increase access to care. Promoting the use of telehealth and other emergent health care technologies such as wearable devices, and advocating for federal legislation to address regulatory barriers to the ability of employees to fully access the benefits such innovation holds. Additionally, ERIC’s state advocacy efforts include focusing on ways to alleviate reliance on a given state’s provider population, foster competition by giving patients in-home or outpatient care options, and ultimately work to lower health care costs.
• Expand wellness and other preventive care. ERIC is working to expand employers’ ability to create and manage wellness programs, experiment with capitation and accountable care, and change plan design to encourage healthy behavior by plan beneficiaries.
• Implement coordinated care and end “care silos.” ERIC is working to improve care coordination by advocating for the full implementation of comprehensive electronic medical records owned by the patient and which do not allow for data blocking. Further, ERIC supports policies that reorient the health care system to help patients obtain medical homes, with advanced primary care and comprehensive medication management.
• Reform the payment system to incentivize value. ERIC believes that providers should instead be paid based on the quality of service, the safety of care, the value provided to the patient, and the outcomes achieved. ERIC also supports policies that transform payment in public programs to fully transition the system to one that pays for value rather than volume.

 In addition to public policy priorities regarding employer-sponsored health plans, ERIC has a number of priorities surrounding employee retirement savings. They include:

• Providing employers procedural certainty regarding the provisions permitting employers to make retirement plan matching contributions for workers as if their student loan payments were salary reduction contributions, and permitting employers to create emergency savings “side car” accounts.
• Simplifying reporting and disclosure requirements by shaping regulatory provisions to eliminate redundant and unnecessary disclosures and reducing complexity.
• Minimizing the complexity of the new catch-up rules under SECURE 2.0.
• Clarifying the recoupment and self-correction rules under SECURE 2.0.
• Establishing a workable retirement savings lost and found to help participants locate their benefits, which will rely on input from plan sponsors.
• Clarifying that the new automatic enrollment mandate in SECURE 2.0 does not apply to existing plans.
• Supporting robust congressional oversight to ensure that workers and retirees are truly served by legal enforcement. ERIC opposes proposals to spend more tax dollars on these programs without improvements to accountability and transparency.
• Affirming the responsibility to optimize financial outcomes for plan participants. ERIC supports the longstanding policy that plan fiduciaries may not sacrifice investment returns or assume greater investment risks as a means of promoting collateral social policy goals.
• Preventing burdensome new administrative requirements. ERIC opposes legislative efforts that make retirement plans more costly and less flexible, especially where the law already includes appropriate safeguards.
• Refraining from imposing fiduciary requirements on investments available through a brokerage window.
• Expanding cafeteria plans to allow participants additional pre-tax benefit options such as student loan repayment, disability insurance, long-term care insurance, longevity insurance, and retirement planning services.
• Stopping unnecessary and harmful Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. premium increases. ERIC supports prohibiting premium increases from being used as a funding “offset” for spending proposals unrelated to the retirement system in the future, and calls on Congress to prevent further increases and lower the current level of premiums in light of the PBGC’s improved financial status.
• Strengthening retirement security by giving overfunded plans flexibility to provide enhanced benefits.