An employee with a history of coronary artery disease underwent a difficult operation for her condition. Several weeks later she was re-hospitalized, suffering from a severe staph infection in the area of the incision from her earlier surgery. She became seriously ill and is now disabled. She applied for benefits under her employer’s long-term disability plan, but was rejected on the grounds that her claim was “caused by, contributed to by, or resulting from [a] pre-existing condition.” The plan defines this as a condition for which medical treatment is received in the three months just prior to becoming covered under the plan and where the disability begins in the first 12 months after coverage begins. Her disability did, in fact, occur within a year after she became covered under the plan. She had also received treatment for her coronary artery disease in the 3 months prior to becoming covered under the plan. The in-house review of the decision to deny benefits took one day to complete and produced a one-paragraph decision, noting that “medical records from this period could further strengthen this opinion.” The report acknowledged that the staph infection was not a pre-existing condition, but asserted that it resulted from surgery for her pre-existing coronary problem. Did the plan administrator violate ERISA by denying disability benefits to this woman? Does it matter that the disability benefits would have come directly out of the profits of the insurance company that denied her claim?