The Employee Retirement Income Security Act, better known as ERISA, was enacted to provide protections for employee benefit plans that companies were setting up as inducements for hiring and employee retention. ERISA's requirements are highly technical and involved, part of ERISA's protection scheme against nefarious employers and plan administrators who just don't seem to be able to keep their mitts off the significant amounts of money controlled in these benefit plans.
As an employment lawyer, my perception of ERISA is that it is a never-ending source of plaintiff's litigation as plan administrators seem to make one misstep after another in handling employee investments and returns. The latest round of endless ERISA litigation involves drug plans and the entities set up by employer health insurance plans to monitor drug costs. Most of this litigation involves an alleged failure by the plan administrators to ensure that drugs covered by employer health insurance plans are the cheapest, most effective, and most readily available. There's a very detailed and boring description of the litigation here-- it looks like the plaintiff's bar has discovered another relatively untapped source of money to exploit with huge class action claims.
As with most litigation claims under the statute, this new variety should serve as a warning that employers cannot simply dump responsibility for the management of their benefit plans - health, retirement, etc. - to third parties without some type of oversight. Remember, the statute does not require that everything be done on the lowest cost basis, but rather that plan decisions are based on rational and justifiable reasons. It wouldn't hurt to sit down with plan administrators annually and get an explanation for the decisions they are making on your retirement and health insurance programs.
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