House OKs end to insurance antitrust break

[pauldun170]

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- The U.S. House voted Wednesday to strip the health insurance industry of its antitrust exemption, a move Speaker Nancy Pelosi said could lower premiums.

The House voted 406-19 to pass the Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act.

"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," Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement posted on her official government Web site. "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."

Pelosi said the health insurance industry had become "increasingly concentrated" in recent years, giving consumers fewer choices while using its antitrust exemption to further "anti-competitive behavior."

"There is also evidence that removing this antitrust exemption will result in lower prices and other benefits for consumers," the statement said.

"A healthy and competitive health insurance market will drive prices down in the health insurance industry, just as we have seen it do in so many other industries where competition is allowed to take hold."

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/...9241267062766/

http://www.examiner.com/x-26735-Cabl...rust-exemption