title: Collectively bargained public health benefit plans.
abstract: The marketplace for health benefits for public sector employees is large and complex with a great variety of approaches for providing care and a difficult patchwork of regulatory and collective bargaining regulation to deal with in designing a plan. Public sector workers' plans are subject to an additional constraint provided by the political nature of the process. The products sold to public sector plans are not regulated as ERISA plans, given the exclusion of government plans and the differential regulation of collectively bargained plans under the HMO act. This article attempts to guide the reader through some of the difficulties of this marketplace, pointing out pitfalls and opportunities where they appear.
authors.affiliation: University of Connecticut, USA.
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Fields
authors.forename: B S
authors.initials: BS
authors.lastname: Poole
mesh_terms: D003098:Collective Bargaining; D019461:Employee Retirement Income Security Act; D006264:Health Benefit Plans, Employee / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006279:Health Maintenance Organizations / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D017008:Negotiating; D011243:Preferred Provider Organizations / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D018907:Privacy; D017150:Public Sector; D013219:State Government; D014481:United States