I have posted a fair amount on the impact of what are becoming known generically as “Fair Share” statutes, which are attempts to “reform” health insurance on a state level by means of mandating that employers provide health insurance benefits. I have talked about three main themes in my various posts on this topic, all of which stem from a certain skepticism as to whether these types of legislative responses to the problem of the uninsured are as well thought out as they are well intended. The first is the question of whether they are preempted by ERISA, and whether the rush by many states into this topic is a waste of resources, on the thesis that these state initiatives are likely to be found preempted, under the current state of the law. The second is the question of intended and unintended outcomes, and whether many of these state laws are really well thought out, or, two, whether the legislatures enacting them really know what they are getting into (for instance, just think of the Maryland legislature naively believing it could enact a statute that only mandated health insurance for Wal-Mart employees without running afoul of ERISA preemption, which of course ended in the federal courts striking the act down as preempted). And the third, finally, is the fact that these acts don’t target the real problem underlying the high rates of the uninsured, namely the ever increasing costs of health insurance. I have talked about all of these quite a bit, and you can find posts on them by clicking on the preemption, health insurance, or Massachusetts Health Care Reform Act headings over on the left hand side of this blog.

Here’s a couple of interesting articles I wanted to pass along that hit on at least two, and maybe three, of these themes. The first is this article here, titled “Labor Market Effects of Employer Provided Health Insurance,” which explores the question of how mandating that employers provide health insurance, as many of these state reform acts do, impacts employment. One of its findings? That mandating health insurance for all workers does in fact distort the labor market, but that even more interestingly, although perhaps as one would expect, “mandating the insurance only for full-time workers leads to higher [rates of] coverage than [without a mandate, but also to] an increased number of part-time workers.” If, as one would expect and this article suggests, there is a trade off between employment and the extent to which state laws mandate health insurance coverage, one would hope that state legislatures carefully analyze this issue before joining the current rush to mandate health insurance coverage.

Now, I am beginning to feel obliged by the tenor of my posts on this issue to note that I don’t disagree that the rate of the uninsured in this country is a real problem, and that my skepticism really runs to whether the increasing number of state attempts to address the problem – something they are probably foreclosed from doing by ERISA preemption anyway – represents the most thoughtful and effective way to tackle this problem. And this thought leads to the second paper I wanted to mention, which is law student Darren Abernathy’s upcoming law review note addressing the question of how to draft these types of laws to avoid ERISA preemption. This, at least, is a thoughtful attempt to get around some of the problems that arise when states target the problem of the uninsured by means of health insurance reform statutes. We need more of that type of forward looking and proactive analysis, and less of the willy nilly charge into the issue we are seeing by many state and local governments, who, having apparently learned nothing from Maryland’s experience, just keep enacting legislation on the slim hope that it won’t be preempted, rather than on an analysis and strategy that might place the statutes they enact outside the scope of ERISA preemption.