Home› A Moving Train

Congress To Revoke Health Insurance Industry’s Exemption...?

g under pg under p Surfing The far side of THE Sombrero Galaxy Posts: 18,200
edited October 2009 in A Moving Train
Congress Considers Revoking Health Insurance Industry’s Exemption from Antitrust Laws

Democrats say the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945 has granted the insurance industry a captive market with no curbs on price fixing and other anti-competitive practices. Last week the Justice Department’s top antitrust regulator, Christine Varney, voiced support for a repeal. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are also backing a repeal, and New York Senator Charles Schumer has called for including it as part of the healthcare reform bill. The House Judiciary Committee plans to vote on the issue on Wednesday

Give this a watch cause I don't understand why this issue wasn't brought earlier in this Health Care debate?
AMY GOODMAN: For more on this story, we’re joined from Washington, DC by Ryan Grim. He’s the senior congressional correspondent for the Huffington Post.

Welcome, Ryan, to Democracy Now! Can you just lay out what is being proposed here?


RYAN GRIM: Sure. Right now, the insurance industry is one of the only businesses that gets antitrust protection from the federal government. It’s basically them, Major League Baseball and National Football. It’s kind of an accident of history. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could regulate insurance industries, and immediately Congress stepped in and said, “Well, we’re not going to do it.” So, what they’ve been able to do is set up these near monopolies throughout the United States.


The Department of Justice estimates that I think in 94 percent of the country, there is a—what they call a highly concentrated market, which means that it’s in danger of becoming a monopoly or it has already tipped over into a monopoly, and that allows insurers to collude legally with hospitals and with doctors and other providers to set prices. They set high prices that they pay to the hospitals, then they can raise premiums. And without any competition, there’s nothing that anybody can do about it, and it’s perfectly legal.


SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And why now is the support growing on Capitol Hill to repeal the law?


RYAN GRIM: It’s payback, pure and simple. There’s been a kind of truce that the Democrats have had with the insurance industry: you know, you guys don’t come out here with your Harry and Louise ads and just burn the town down, and we’ll give you, you know, 47 million new customers. But when the insurance industry, about two weeks ago, came out with a report that was very critical of reform, it was seen by the Obama administration and Democrats on the Hill as a declaration of war, so Democrats came back with what is their biggest weapon, probably, to shoot back at the insurance industry.


It’s strange that it took them so long to come up with this, because if choice and competition, the mantra that you always hear from Obama, is really the thing that you want here, then revoking the antitrust exemption—protection is the first thing that you’d want to do, after the public option, of course.


SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And shouldn’t this have been part of healthcare reform legislation in any case? Why is it only coming as retaliation for the health insurance industry’s report a couple weeks ago?


RYAN GRIM: It’s kind of a nuclear issue. And so, if Democrats would have brought it up in the very beginning and made it part of the early bill, then the health insurance industry would have come guns blazing at healthcare reform. And the Obama strategy from the very beginning was to try to at least neuter, if not win over, the major healthcare players. That’s why they cut the big deals with PhRMA, with the medical device makers, with the hospitals. They cut another deal with doctors today about their Medicare cuts. So they’ve been trying to keep everybody at the table so that they won’t blow up the process. And they feared that if they revoked this exemption early in the process, that the health insurance industry would try to blow it up, and maybe they would see it implode over August, and we wouldn’t even be talking about healthcare anymore. That was their strategy, at least. Whether that’s right or not, nobody knows. But now that they’ve come into open war, you know, everything’s on the table.

Peace
*We CAN bomb the World to pieces, but we CAN'T bomb it into PEACE*...Michael Franti

*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti

*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)


Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • Prince Of DorknessPrince Of Dorkness Posts: 3,763
    First I'd heard of it and I'll look into it more before I start an opinion either way.

    but the insurance industry has had a free ride for WAY too long.

    And since they've spread lies, victimized the people, made billions of bucks by keeping us all sick... or letting us die...it's time for the world to change.
    I can't drive without Pearl Jam
  • gimmesometruth27gimmesometruth27 St. Fuckin Louis Posts: 23,303
    g under p wrote:
    Congress Considers Revoking Health Insurance Industry’s Exemption from Antitrust Laws

    Democrats say the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945 has granted the insurance industry a captive market with no curbs on price fixing and other anti-competitive practices. Last week the Justice Department’s top antitrust regulator, Christine Varney, voiced support for a repeal. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are also backing a repeal, and New York Senator Charles Schumer has called for including it as part of the healthcare reform bill. The House Judiciary Committee plans to vote on the issue on Wednesday

    Give this a watch cause I don't understand why this issue wasn't brought earlier in this Health Care debate?
    AMY GOODMAN: For more on this story, we’re joined from Washington, DC by Ryan Grim. He’s the senior congressional correspondent for the Huffington Post.

    Welcome, Ryan, to Democracy Now! Can you just lay out what is being proposed here?


    RYAN GRIM: Sure. Right now, the insurance industry is one of the only businesses that gets antitrust protection from the federal government. It’s basically them, Major League Baseball and National Football. It’s kind of an accident of history. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could regulate insurance industries, and immediately Congress stepped in and said, “Well, we’re not going to do it.” So, what they’ve been able to do is set up these near monopolies throughout the United States.


    The Department of Justice estimates that I think in 94 percent of the country, there is a—what they call a highly concentrated market, which means that it’s in danger of becoming a monopoly or it has already tipped over into a monopoly, and that allows insurers to collude legally with hospitals and with doctors and other providers to set prices. They set high prices that they pay to the hospitals, then they can raise premiums. And without any competition, there’s nothing that anybody can do about it, and it’s perfectly legal.


    SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And why now is the support growing on Capitol Hill to repeal the law?


    RYAN GRIM: It’s payback, pure and simple. There’s been a kind of truce that the Democrats have had with the insurance industry: you know, you guys don’t come out here with your Harry and Louise ads and just burn the town down, and we’ll give you, you know, 47 million new customers. But when the insurance industry, about two weeks ago, came out with a report that was very critical of reform, it was seen by the Obama administration and Democrats on the Hill as a declaration of war, so Democrats came back with what is their biggest weapon, probably, to shoot back at the insurance industry.


    It’s strange that it took them so long to come up with this, because if choice and competition, the mantra that you always hear from Obama, is really the thing that you want here, then revoking the antitrust exemption—protection is the first thing that you’d want to do, after the public option, of course.


    SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And shouldn’t this have been part of healthcare reform legislation in any case? Why is it only coming as retaliation for the health insurance industry’s report a couple weeks ago?


    RYAN GRIM: It’s kind of a nuclear issue. And so, if Democrats would have brought it up in the very beginning and made it part of the early bill, then the health insurance industry would have come guns blazing at healthcare reform. And the Obama strategy from the very beginning was to try to at least neuter, if not win over, the major healthcare players. That’s why they cut the big deals with PhRMA, with the medical device makers, with the hospitals. They cut another deal with doctors today about their Medicare cuts. So they’ve been trying to keep everybody at the table so that they won’t blow up the process. And they feared that if they revoked this exemption early in the process, that the health insurance industry would try to blow it up, and maybe they would see it implode over August, and we wouldn’t even be talking about healthcare anymore. That was their strategy, at least. Whether that’s right or not, nobody knows. But now that they’ve come into open war, you know, everything’s on the table.

    Peace
    wow, this is interesting. wonder why this did not make the news. i heard thom hartman talking about this very issue last week or the week before. he was saying that the dems in congress should enforce this. the cynic in me says they won't, but the optimist says that congress might play hardball with these insurnce companies.
    "You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry."  - Lincoln

    "Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
  • g under pg under p Surfing The far side of THE Sombrero Galaxy Posts: 18,200
    gimmesometruth27 wrote:
    wow, this is interesting. wonder why this did not make the news. i heard thom hartman talking about this very issue last week or the week before. he was saying that the dems in congress should enforce this. the cynic in me says they won't, but the optimist says that congress might play hardball with these insurnce companies.

    I hope to hell they revoke this anti-exemption just to stir up this health reform debate.

    Peace
    *We CAN bomb the World to pieces, but we CAN'T bomb it into PEACE*...Michael Franti

    *MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
    .....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti

    *The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)


Sign In or Register to comment.