376
Opinion of the Court
purchased for plans subject to ERISA."); FMC Corp., 498 U. S., at 64 ("[I]f a plan is insured, a State may regulate it indirectly through regulation of its insurer and its insurer's insurance contracts."). Under UNUM's interpretation of § 1104(a)(1)(D), however, States would be powerless to alter the terms of the insurance relationship in ERISA plans; insurers could displace any state regulation simply by inserting a contrary term in plan documents. This interpretation would virtually "rea[d] the saving clause out of ERISA." Metropolitan Life, 471 U. S., at 741.6
UNUM next contends that ERISA's civil enforcement provision, § 502(a), 29 U. S. C. § 1132(a), preempts any action for plan benefits brought under state rules such as notice-pre judice. Whatever the merits of UNUM's view of § 502(a)'s preemptive force,7 the issue is not implicated here.
6 We recognize that applying the States' varying insurance regulations creates disuniformities for "national plans that enter into local markets to purchase insurance." Metropolitan Life, 471 U. S., at 747. As we have observed, however, "[s]uch disuniformities . . . are the inevitable result of the congressional decision to 'save' local insurance regulation." Ibid.
7 We discussed this issue in Pilot Life Ins. Co. v. Dedeaux, 481 U. S. 41 (1987). That case concerned Mississippi common law creating a cause of action for bad-faith breach of contract, law not specifically directed to the insurance industry and therefore not saved from ERISA preemption. In that context, the Solicitor General, for the United States as amicus curiae, urged the exclusivity of § 502(a), ERISA's civil enforcement provision, and observed that § 502(a) was modeled on the exclusive remedy provided by § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947 (LMRA), 29 U. S. C. § 185. The Court agreed with the Solicitor General's submission. 481 U. S., at 52-56.
In the instant case, the Solicitor General, for the United States as amicus curiae, has endeavored to qualify the argument advanced in Pilot Life. See Brief 20-25. Noting that "LMRA Section 301 does not contain any statutory exception analogous to ERISA's insurance savings provision," the Solicitor General now maintains that the discussion of § 502(a) in Pilot Life "does not in itself require that a state law that 'regulates insurance,' and so comes within the terms of the savings clause, is nevertheless preempted if it provides a state-law cause of action or remedy." Brief 25; see also id., at 23 ("[T]he insurance savings clause, on its face,
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