House votes to end insurance anti-trust exemption
Finally:
House Passes Bill To Repeal Antitrust Exemption For Health Insurance Companies
By a vote of 406-19, the House passed the Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act (HR 4626), introduced by Reps. Tom Perriello (D-VA) and Betsy Markey (D-CO). This bill is designed to restore competition and transparency to the health insurance market – by repealing the blanket antitrust exemption afforded to health insurance companies by the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945. Under this legislation, health insurers will no longer be shielded from legal accountability for price fixing, dividing up territories among themselves, sabotaging their competitors in order to gain monopoly power, and other such anti-competitive practices.
Its been insanity for the insurance industry to have been exempt from the same rules that other industries must follow in regards to collusion and price fixing- which they were exempted from in order to attempt to sell the notion of insurance to a dubious public almost 70 years ago.
They were right to be dubious, it turns out.
