Impact on Federal Government
- The federal government would be responsible for the establishment of standards and a regulatory framework for the plans offered by the Benefit Administrators.
Impact on States
Impact on Insurers
- Calls for cost transparency and accountability.
Impact on Providers
- Evidence-based standards for quality care would be established, and performance based on those standards would be made available to encourage quality care and transparent decision making. Cost information would likewise be available.
- Incentives would reward quality, cost-effective care.
Impact on Employers
- While employer-based coverage would not be abolished, employers could have less administrative burden and less funding responsibility than is currently typical.
- Employers could choose to continue the plans they have in place, establish plans
through Benefit Administrators, or voluntarily contribute to funding their employees’ purchase of coverage through Benefit Administrators.
Impact on Individuals
- Individuals could buy insurance on their own, not just through employers. Equivalent tax status would apply to all individuals regardless of how they access coverage.
- Individuals would have greater responsibility for their health care funding and decision making.
- The plan aims to make better and more transparent information available to aid individual health care decision making.
- The plan calls for simplified nondiscrimination standards.
Proponents/Opponents
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Proponents of ERISA’s proposal say that it differs from other proposals in addressing a broad range of issues and in suggesting fundamental reform of the health care system, rather than relatively minor adjustments to the status quo. This approach, they say, is more likely to effect real change and the ability to deliver quality care fairly to a majority of Americans.
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Key Targets for Investment
Health information technology.
Short-term savings accounts.
Benefit Administrators,which can theoretically offer a range of coverage types.
Notable Feature
- ERIC calls the health care situation in America “an urgent debate."
- In addition to health care coverage, benefits administered via this platform could include retirement, short-term savings, life insurance, disability, and auto and home owner insurance. Among the uses of the short-term savings accounts would be health care costs not covered by the health care benefit.
- The plan supports portability of benefits.
Experts' Comments“In the early 1990s, when the Clinton health-care plan was on the agenda, the opposing groups cranked out press releases, claiming to have better proposals of their own. As soon as the Clinton plan went down, the press releases stopped.
I thought about that when I got a release from the National Federation of Independent Business, supporting a system that's universal, private, affordable, efficient, realistic, blah, blah, blah -- what I call ‘adjective-based’ reform. The NFIB commissioned a study and I wish them well, but they're not thinking outside the box. What's interesting about ERIC is its fresh approach."
--Jane Bryant Quinn,
on Bloomberg.net
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Interest Groups 
