🧑‍⚖️ ADA advocates at the Supreme Court

In this edition:

• 🧑‍⚖️ ADA files Amicus brief with Supreme Court

• 🐣 Gen Z is self-conscious about their smile

• ⚖️ $1M oral surgery settlement

• 🧠 Brain abscess of dental origin

• And more!

ADA files Amicus brief with Supreme Court

The ADA is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a decision from a lower appeals court on the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 that limits states’ traditional authority to regulate health care and insurance. 

Dental plans have often claimed that a federal law called ERISA allows them to avoid complying with state laws impacting dental coverage if the plans are operating as administrators for an employer self-funded plan. In its amicus brief to the Supreme Court, the ADA continues to advocate that most state laws, particularly those that protect patients and dentists from abuse by dental insurers, can be applied to all carriers, including those administering self-funded dental plans for employers.

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held last year that ERISA preempts provisions of an Oklahoma law regulating pharmacy benefit managers, which manage prescription drug benefits on behalf of health plans by negotiating prices with drug manufacturers and contracting with pharmacies. However, the ADA called this decision “a very expansive view” of ERISA, citing the Supreme Court’s October 2020 decision in the Rutledge v. Pharmaceutical Care Management Association case that “makes it clear ERISA preemption is not extensive.”