Update: Health Insurance Monopolies and The Anti-Trust Exemption

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I wrote about this earlier Health Insurance Monopolies and The Anti-Trust Exemption.

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee voted 20-9 to approve legislation to repeal the health insurers' exemption under the McCarran-Ferguson Act. House panel votes to end insurers' antitrust shield:

"No one on this committee believes that price fixing or carving up markets is a good thing, and the wide, bipartisan support for this bill's passage reflects this," said committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich.

In the Senate, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he'd offer an antitrust exemption repeal as part of the health-care overhaul bill when the Senate begins debate on it, probably in the next few weeks.

Consumer groups are convinced that ending the exemption would prompt insurers to compete with one another more energetically. The current practice, said Jim Guest, the Consumers Union president and CEO, is "bad for consumers, bad for patients and bad for taxpayers."

The push to end the exemption will have the backing of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who appeared with Leahy at a Capitol news conference.

"The case for action is very simple," Reid said. "When companies are forced to compete with one another, that's what our free enterprise system is all about, and when you have one industry that has no referee … you never win the ballgame."

NB: Speaking of ballgames, Major League Baseball is the only other business exempt from anti-trust laws. End MLB's anti-trust exemption as well. Break up those damn Yankees!