Cite as: 514 U. S. 645 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
benefits by policies insuring against hospital and surgical expenses. Because the regulated policies included those bought by employee welfare benefit plans, we recognized that the law "directly affected" such plans. Id., at 732. Although we went on to hold that the law was ultimately saved from pre-emption by the insurance saving clause, § 514(b)(2)(A), 29 U. S. C. § 1144(b)(2)(A), respondents proffer the first steps in our decision as support for their argument that all laws affecting ERISA plans through their impact on insurance policies "relate to" such plans and are pre-empted unless expressly saved by the statute. The challengers take Metropolitan Life too far, however.
The Massachusetts statute applied not only to " '[a]ny blanket or general policy of insurance . . . or any policy of accident and sickness insurance' " but also to " 'any employees' health and welfare fund which provide[d] hospital expense and surgical expense benefits.' " 471 U. S., at 730, n. 11. In fact, the State did not even try to defend its law as unrelated to employee benefit plans for the purpose of § 514(a). Id., at 739. As a result, there was no reason to distinguish with any precision between the effects on insurers that are sufficiently connected with employee benefit plans to "relate to" the plans and those effects that are not. It was enough to address the distinction bluntly, saying on the one hand that laws like the one in Metropolitan Life relate to plans since they "bea[r] indirectly but substantially on all insured benefit plans, . . . requir[ing] them to purchase the mental-health benefits specified in the statute when they purchase a certain kind of common insurance policy," ibid., but saying on the other that "laws that regulate only the insurer, or the way in which it may sell insurance, do not 'relate to' benefit plans," id., at 741. Even this basic distinction recognizes that not all regulations that would influence the cost of insurance would relate to employee benefit plans within the meaning of § 514(a). If, for example, a State were to regulate sales of insurance by commercial insurers more stringently
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