812
Opinion of the Court
care to its participants and their beneficiaries." Ibid. The HFA, concluded the court, thus "related to" the Fund because it reduced the amount of Fund assets that would otherwise be available to provide plan members with benefits, and could cause the plan to limit its benefits, or to charge plan members higher fees.
The first petition for certiorari in this case was filed before we handed down our opinion in New York State Conference of Blue Cross & Blue Shield Plans v. Travelers Ins. Co., 514 U. S. 645 (1995). In that case we held that ERISA did not pre-empt a New York statute that required hospitals to collect surcharges from patients covered by a commercial insurer but not from patients insured by a Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan. Id., at 649-651. After deciding Travelers, we vacated the judgment of the Court of Appeals in this case and remanded for further consideration in light of that opinion. 514 U. S. 1094 (1995).
On remand the Court of Appeals reinstated its original judgment. The court distinguished the statute involved in Travelers on the ground that—by imposing a tax on the health insurance carriers who provided coverage to plans and their beneficiaries—it had only an indirect economic influence on the decisions of ERISA plan administrators, whereas the HFA "depletes the Fund's assets directly, and thus has an immediate impact on the operations of an ERISA plan," NYSA-ILA Medical and Clinical Services Fund v. Axelrod, M. D., 74 F. 3d 28, 30 (1996). We granted the New York officials' second petition for certiorari, 519 U. S. 926 (1996), and now reverse.
II
When the Second Circuit initially found the HFA preempted as applied to Fund-operated hospitals, that court relied substantially on an expansive and literal interpretation of the words "relate to" in § 514(a) of ERISA. 27 F. 3d, at 826. In reconsidering the case on remand, the court appears to have adhered to that approach, failing to give proper
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