The Denver Business Journal reports:
A recent salvo against the insurance industry came in a missive from U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey, D-Colorado. From an email her office sent out Monday:
“For too many years the health insurance industry has been allowed to fix prices, collude with each other and wield monopoly control over us without fear of investigation.
“This week I’m introducing a piece of legislation removing the anti-trust exemption from the insurance industry. I’m proud to stand up for the patients against the kind of profiteering the insurance industry has so long enjoyed.”
The Denver Post reported this last week, and I submitted the following letter to the editor:
Instead of scapegoating a narrow antitrust exemption for paltry insurance competition, Representative Betsy Markey should confess to how she and her political allies have prevented competitive insurance markets in the first place.
The Post reports that Markey’s bill would “remove the antitrust exemption now enjoyed by health-insurance companies” (Feb. 5). This is misleading. The exemption, codified by the McCarran-Ferguson Act, applies only to practices constituting “the business of insurance,” that are “regulated by State law” and lack “an agreement to boycott, coerce, or intimidate.” The federal government can already restrict allegedly anti-competitive insurance company practices such as mergers and group boycotts.
Blame politicians for protecting insurers from competition. Because the tax code chains you to our employer’s plans, changing your insurance provider entails changing jobs or paying a stiff tax penalty. Further, politicians forbid consumers from buying more affordable policies available in other states. Repealing these controls would greatly benefit consumers.
For more, see:
Government Accountability Office, Legal Principles Defining the Scope of the Federal Antitrust Exemption for Insurance, March 4, 2005.
Eliminating Antitrust Exemption Will Kill Health Care Competition, Gregory Conko & Kevin Hilferty, Investors Business Daily, Novemer 4 2009,
and a well-referenced report by the same authors: Congressional Misdiagnosis: Why Repealing McCarran-Ferguson Will Harm Competition in Health Insurance Markets.
