7928. Employee Benefits and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act
3.00 credits
Prerequisites: None.
Grading Basis: Graded
In this course we will study ERISA and the profound effect it has had on American society, particularly with respect to its regulation of retirement income and health care. To understand the multi-trillion dollar ERISA world, we will examine what a benefits plan is, how plans are operated and administered, the difference between pension and welfare plans, what plan administrators' fiduciary duties are to plan participants, the variety and availability of remedies for ERISA violations, the degree to which federal benefits law preempts state benefits law, the interaction between ERISA and the Affordable Care Act, and the policy debates that animate contemporary discussions of benefit reform.