Cite as: 514 U. S. 645 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
possible by the actions of such purchasers." Id., at 2254-2255.
The last-quoted subsection seems to envision a system very much like the one New York put in place, but the significant point in any event is that the statute's provision for comprehensive aid to state health care rate regulation is simply incompatible with pre-emption of the same by ERISA. To interpret ERISA's pre-emption provision as broadly as respondents suggest would have rendered the entire NHPRDA utterly nugatory, since it would have left States without the authority to do just what Congress was expressly trying to induce them to do by enacting the NHPRDA. Given that the NHPRDA was enacted after ERISA and by the same Congress, it just makes good sense to reject such an interpretation.6
6 The history of Medicare regulation makes the same point, confirming that Congress never envisioned ERISA pre-emption as blocking state health care cost control, but rather meant to encourage and rely on state experimentation like New York's. See generally K. Davis, G. Anderson, D. Rowland, & E. Steinberg, Health Care Cost Containment 23-25, 81, 99 (1990). Since the time DRG systems were tried out in the 1960's and 1970's, Congress has consistently shown its awareness and encouragement of controlled payment alternatives to the federal regulatory scheme. The Social Security Amendments of 1967, Pub. L. 90-248, § 402(a), 81 Stat. 930-931, as amended 42 U. S. C. § 1395b-1, for example, granted the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (now Health and Human Services) the authority to waive Medicare rules to allow for physician and hospital reimbursement according to approved state payment schedules. In the Social Security Amendments of 1972, Pub. L. 92-603, § 222(a)(5), 86 Stat. 1391, Congress specifically called upon the Secretary to report on prospective reimbursement schemes that had been thus favored already or could be in the future. Later on, after the development of all-payor ratesetting schemes like the NYPHRM and New Jersey's Health Care Cost Reduction Act of 1978, 1978 N. J. Laws, ch. 83, Congress's Medicare waiver provisions evolved to the point of explicit reference to a State's commitment to apply its hospital reimbursement control system to a substantial portion of hospitals and inpatient services statewide. See 42 U. S. C. §§ 1395ww(c)(1), (c)(5)(A). Indeed, in its Report on the Social Security Amendments of
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