Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I appreciate Senator Daines joining me to clarify the intent of the Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act of 2019. This legislation, which Senator Daines has introduced with Senator Leahy, would modify the McCarran-Ferguson Act by eliminating the health insurance industry's exemption from Federal antitrust laws. That sounds like a good idea, but it has implications for longstanding State regulation of the insurance industry. States have had the primary responsibility for the regulation of health insurance since the 1940s. Given my past experience as commissioner of Maine's Department of Professional and Financial Regulation, I know firsthand that State insurance regulators do a good job of responding to the needs and concerns of their insurance consumers. To protect consumers, State insurance regulators hold probing hearings on rate requests which often lead to lower rates being approved. Most State insurance regulators have consumer protection advocates who resolve disputes between insurers and individual consumers. State regulators do not tolerate unfair or anticompetitive practices. As the National Association of Insurance Commissioners wrote to the leaders of the Senate and the Senate Judiciary Committee, ``The potential for bid rigging, price-fixing and market allocation is of great concern to state insurance regulators and we share your view that such practices would be harmful to consumers and should not be tolerated.…”