U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-1st, has voted for the Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act, legislation designed to “restore competition and transparency to the health insurance market by repealing that industry’s exemption from antitrust laws.”

According to a statement released on Wednesday, the bill will give American families and businesses, both big and small, more control over their own health care choices by promoting greater insurance competition.

The U.S. House passed the bill by a bipartisan vote of 406 to 19.

“Removing the health insurance industry’s antitrust exemption is a common sense solution that encourages a free-market path toward improved health care affordability, quality, and choice for hardworking Americans,” Visclosky said. “I will continue to support legislation to fix our health care system so that all Americans have access to affordable, quality health care.”

“The existing antitrust exemption shields insurance companies from legal accountability for price fixing, dividing up territories among themselves, sabotaging their competitors in the marketplace in order to gain monopoly power, and other practices that unjustly harm consumers,” the statement said. “Antitrust legal actions alleging each of these practices, and more, have been blocked by invoking the McCarran-Ferguson antitrust exemption that the insurance industry enjoys. No other major industry in America has this kind of blanket exemption from the antitrust laws.”

“For the last 65 years the health insurance industry has been allowed to engage in anti-competitive behavior at the expense of hardworking Americans,” Visclosky said. “Even as half of the bankruptcies in Northwest Indiana stem from high health care costs, the insurance companies have been protected from legal action for price fixing and collusion. That is not fair to the people in our area and across the country who cannot afford the coverage they need. I am proud to have voted today to restore fair competition to the health insurance market, which will benefit all Americans.”

“The Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act will not only enable appropriate enforcement against unjust practices when they are uncovered, but will also give all health insurance companies healthy competitive incentives that will promote better affordability, improved quality, increased innovation, and greater consumer choice, as the antitrust laws have done throughout the rest of the economy for over a century,” the statement said. “The bill makes absolutely no change in the state-based system for regulating insurance, existing law reaffirming state regulatory and taxing authority for the insurance industry, nor the legitimate collective gathering and distribution of statistical information that the insurance industry uses in assessing risks for policies.”

“Leading consumer groups and senior groups, state attorneys general, the American Bar Association, and others, have supported repealing this antitrust exemption for decades,” the statement said. “The bipartisan Antitrust Modernization Commission, established by Congress and President Bush in 2002, echoed this call in its 2007 report.”

Posted 2/25/2010