Quaid v. U.S. Healthcare, Inc.

NEHRING, Justice,

concurring:

126 I join in Justice Parrish's opinion. I write separately because I believe it is important to bring proper comfort to adoptive parents by confirming that provisions of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA),¹ guarantee that the adoption of a child who had the good fortune to have been covered by health insurance will not result in the perverse outcome urged on us by the defendant insurers.

27 That an adopted child takes on a new legal persona can scarcely be made more clear than in this case, in which a child known as Z.C. became Skylar Quaid. To be sure, certain matters of consequence like his social security number and medical records may have accompanied Z.C.'s corporeal self through his transition to Skylar. In other important ways in the eyes of the law, when Skylar was "born" through his adoption by the Quaids, Z.0. legally expired. Under Utah law, the entry of the adoption decree created a parent-child relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Quaid and Skylar and caused the Quaids to "have all the rights and be subject to all the duties of that relationship." Utah Code Ann. § 78-30-10 (2006). The Quaids acquired "a constitutionally protected liberty and privacy interest in retaining custody of an adopted child." Id. § 78-30-4.12(2)(d). Conversely, with the entry of the decree of adoption, Z.C./Skylar's birth parents were "released from all parental duties toward and all responsibilities for the adopted child, and have no further rights with regard to that child." Id. § 78-80-11.

128 Our laws give expression to Utah's "compelling interest" in "providing stable and permanent homes for adoptive children in a prompt manner, in preventing the disruption of adoptive placements, and in holding parents accountable for meeting the needs of children." Id. § 78-30-4.12(@2)(a). Stability and permanence are promoted by laws that permit an adoptive family to fully integrate an adopted child into its life. The goal of bringing an adopted child into the nurturing embrace of the adopting family is made less attainable when the health insurance coverage that is critical to a family's psychological and physical well-being is denied to the adopted child. It is furthermore clear that this state's interest in promoting parental accountability for meeting the needs of adopted children also falls victim to this cireamstance.

129 To the defendant insurers, the event of young Z.C./Skylar's adoption by the Quaids, if relevant at all to the legal analysis of the issues in this case, deserves little more than a footnote. To me, his status as an adopted child is the centerpiece of the analysis. The legal creation of Skylar Quaid was accompanied by the legal extinction of Z.C. The same force of law that brought Skylar Quaid into existence made him, a stranger to Aetna's extension of benefits clause. The person who qualified as a member under Aetna's plan the instant before his adoption disappeared with the entry of the adoption decree.

T30 To the extent that the conceptual formulation I have thus far presented does not provide a fully satisfying rationale for imposing on the Loren Cook Company the obligation to extend coverage to Skylar, those shortcomings are remedied by federal law. By its very title, section 1169(c)(1) contemplates the requirements of group health care plan coverage of dependent children in cases of adoption. It states:

Coverage effective upon placement for adoption. In any case in which a group health plan provides coverage for dependent children of participants or beneficiaries, such plan shall provide benefits to dependent children placed with participants or beneficiaries for adoption under the same terms and conditions as apply in the case of dependent children who are natural children of participants or benefi-claries under the plan, irrespective of whether the adoption has become final.

29 U.S.C. § 1169(c)(1).

31 My reading leaves me convinced this statutory provision is animated by an intention to provide persons contemplating adoption with the assurance that they could know the scope of available coverage in advance of an adoption. Only then could they confidently pursue an adoption without the need to investigate and compare the health care benefits to which candidates for adoption might be entitled. The challenges posed by adoption are great enough. To add to them the obligation to obtain legal opinions concerning health care benefits is, at the very least, unseemly and rendered unnecessary under section 1169(c)(1). The mandate of section 1169(c)(1) is clear: Adopted children like Skylar are entitled to enjoy the same health plan coverage as the biological children of his adoptive parents. The statute neither invites nor admits exceptions.

€382 Finally, I take up a matter that, unlike Skylar's adoptive status, is a footnote in this appeal, but one that merits greater prominence. Utah State Medicaid paid more than $420,000 for medical services rendered to Skylar. The cireumstances that led Medicaid to make these payments are not clear, nor are they relevant to the issues we decide today. I am in no way troubled that the taxpayers of this state exhibited their compassion for a child in need by seeing to it that he was provided critical medical services. In light of our determination that the responsibility to pay for most if not all of these medical services fell to Loren Cook, I hope the compassion of our taxpayers is conditional and temporary.

1 38 Chief Justice DURHAM concurs in the concurring opinion of Justice NEHRING.

1 . 29 U.S.C. §§ 1001-1461, as amended by 29 U.S.C. § 1169(c).