The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday self-insured health plans could not be forced by a state to report claims information for use in state health pricing databases, reports The New York Times.
The case at issue, Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual, began when Liberty Mutual refused to turn over claims data to Vermont for use in its insurance rate database.
About 93 million people have self-insured healthcare plans, according to The New York Times. Without data from private payers Vermont argued its database is incomplete and much less useful in tracking healthcare costs across populations.
Writing for the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy said Vermont's reporting law would burden insurers with inconsistent reporting requirements and interfere with health plans' federal reporting responsibilities, according to the article.
Currently, private insurance companies must disclose financial data to the federal government under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.
Including Vermont, 18 states have proposed or passed laws that require health plans to provide the state with pricing data on patient claims. Before the high court's ruling on the issue, more than a dozen other states had shown interest in compiling similar claims databases, according to The New York Times.
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