Maryland: Health Care Spending Mandate Struck Down

July 19, 2006

The law would have required large employers in the state such as Wal-Mart (on whose behalf the challenge was filed) to spend 8% of payroll on employee health care. A federal judge rejected the law on the grounds that it “violated federal law which promotes uniform treatment of employers.”

While this law struck me as creative thinking on how to solve the problem of rising costs for the state to care for the uninsured, I’m not surprised that it’s been struck down. What if Wal-Mart could meet the need for less than 8% of payroll? What if 8% would not meet the need in any meaningful way? The judge concluded “the law would have hurt Wal-Mart by requiring it to track and allocate benefits for its Maryland employees in a different way from how it keeps track of employee benefits in other states.”