The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent holding that Arkansas can regulate the middlemen that control employee health plans’ prescriptions without treading on ERISA’s\u00a0territory opens the door for states to take more aggressive action to reduce health care costs, experts say.<\/p>\n
“What the Rutledge decision is going to mean is that because those state statutes regulate costs \u2014 they don’t regulate \u2026 whether something is covered or not \u2014 states can apply their [surprise medical billing] statutes to ERISA plans. That is massive,” said Matthew Lavin, a health care attorney and partner at Napoli Shkolnik PLLC.<\/p>\n