Political Quotes

“It is my position that within the good that this does is a poison pill. The good is that consumers would also benefit from a repeal of McCarran-Ferguson. We salute you. But the poison pill is that this measure would ban class actions on a claim for violation of antitrust law, which is the cleverest way of ending antitrust law. Unless you have a class action--well, my doctor-Congressman is not a lawyer, but without class actions, you can't bring a claim because nobody's going to file a suit on a $30 issue, 1 million people suing for $30 each. So it's a poison pill. I'd like to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), who had an amendment that had huge bipartisan support. Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for yielding. We had, at the end of last Congress, a tremendous bipartisan vote-- 406 19--on repealing straight up the antitrust immunity of the insurance industry. The American people, no matter where they are on the Affordable Care Act, agree on one thing: insurance companies should not be able to get together and collude to either exclude people from coverage or drive up prices. Yet they do. They have an exemption under a law from the 1940s. Now, what the gentleman is offering sounds pretty good, but it won't get us there because 90 percent of the antitrust cases are private, and almost every single one of those cases is a class action.…”