Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1418, the Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act. This commonsense legislation repeals a longstanding antitrust exemption for the health insurance industry under the McCarran-Ferguson Act. It does so for price-fixing, bid-rigging, and market allocation-- the most egregious kinds of anticompetitive conduct. There is absolutely no justification for this broad antitrust exemption for the business of health insurance. Congress passed the McCarran-Ferguson Act in response to a 1944 Supreme Court decision finding that the antitrust laws applied to the business of insurance. Both insurance companies and the States expressed concern about that decision. Insurance companies worried that it could jeopardize certain collective practices, like joint rate- setting and the pooling of historical data, and the States were concerned about losing their authority to regulate and tax the business of insurance. To address these issues, McCarran-Ferguson provides that Federal antitrust laws apply to the business of insurance only to the extent that it is not regulated by State law. Unfortunately, this resulted in a broad antitrust exemption. Industry and State revenue concerns, rather than the vital goals of protecting competition and consumers, were the primary drivers of the act.…”