24 pages. "This case is of significant nation-wide importance to employer-sponsors of health benefits plans and their employees. Council members offer some of the Nation's most generous and well-managed health benefit plans, virtually all of which cover employees that reside in many states, counties, and cities. These multi-state plans are complex undertakings. If the Ordinance and other similar 'pay-or-play' laws are allowed, it will create a 'regulatory balkanization' that would strike at the heart of the purpose of ERISA preemption, which is to encourage employers to establish comprehensive health plans for their employees without regard to the particular state or locality in which they live."  MORE >>