814
Opinion of the Court
tives of the ERISA statute as a guide to the scope of the state law that Congress understood would survive." Id., at 656. We endorsed that approach once again earlier this Term in concluding that California's prevailing wage law was not pre-empted by ERISA. California Div. of Labor Standards Enforcement v. Dillingham Constr., N. A., Inc., 519 U. S. 316, 325 (1997).9
Following that approach here, we begin by noting that the historic police powers of the State include the regulation of matters of health and safety. Hillsborough County v. Automated Medical Laboratories, Inc., 471 U. S. 707, 715 (1985). While the HFA is a revenue raising measure, rather than a regulation of hospitals, it clearly operates in a field that " 'has been traditionally occupied by the States.' " Ibid. (quoting Jones v. Rath Packing Co., 430 U. S. 519, 525 (1977)).10 Respondents therefore bear the considerable burden of overcoming "the starting presumption that Congress does not intend to supplant state law." Travelers, 514 U. S., at 654.
There is nothing in the operation of the HFA that convinces us it is the type of state law that Congress intended ERISA to supersede.11 This is not a case in which New
9 "The prevailing wage statute alters the incentives, but does not dictate the choices, facing ERISA plans. In this regard, it is 'no different from myriad state laws in areas traditionally subject to local regulation, which Congress could not possibly have intended to eliminate.' Travelers, 514 U. S., at 668. We could not hold pre-empted a state law in an area of traditional state regulation based on so tenuous a relation without doing grave violence to our presumption that Congress intended nothing of the sort. We thus conclude that California's prevailing wage laws and apprenticeship standards do not have a 'connection with,' and therefore do not 'relate to,' ERISA plans." Dillingham Constr., 519 U. S., at 334.
10 Indeed, the Court of Appeals rested its conclusion in no small part on the fact that the HFA "targets only the health care industry." NYSA- ILA Medical and Clinical Services Fund v. Axelrod, M. D., 27 F. 3d 823, 827 (CA2 1994). Rather than warranting pre-emption, this point supports the application of the "starting presumption" against pre-emption.
11 The respondents place great weight on the fact that in 1983 Congress added a specific provision to ERISA to save Hawaii's Prepaid Health Care Act from pre-emption, and that in so doing, the Legislature noted that
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