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Insurance Industry Antitrust Fight Headed to Conference Committee
The insurance industry successfully fought off a Senate threat to revoke its antitrust exemption as part of health care reform, but the issue lives to fight one more battle in the conference committee negotiations that will take place between the two chambers.
The issue surfaced in mid-October, shortly after the industry lobby, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), pushed hard against the Democratic health care reform effort, claiming it would significantly raise premiums.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) responded by saying the industry should lose its cherished antitrust exemption -- implemented some 60 years ago by the McCarran-Ferguson Act -- and be forced to compete under the same rules as any other enterprise.
"Insurance companies have become so large they dominate entire regions of the country," he said. "They have become so powerful they block start-up businesses from entering the market, and they put smaller companies out of business. They have become so dominant that they dictate business practices. They are so influential that they exert tremendous influence over public policy."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) seconded Reid the next day, twisting the knife and adding that "it is well known to the public that the health insurance companies are the problem." The following day Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers announced a hearing and a committee vote on revoking the exemption. It passed and was included in the House health care bill that passed two weeks ago.
The insurers recognize the politics at work. "Health insurance is one of the most regulated industries in America at both the federal and state level. McCarran-Ferguson has nothing to do with competition in the health insurance market. The focus on this issue is a political ploy designed to distract attention away from the real issue of rising health care costs," AHIP spokesman Robert Zirkelbach told HuffPost.
The Senate, characteristically, has not seen such a one-two-three process unfold.
A week before House passage, HuffPost reported that Reid decided not to include the repeal of the exemption but to go for it as a floor amendment instead. The move was seen as a sop to Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, an industry backer who had yet to offer his support for Reid's motion to proceed and who is a strong public supporter of keeping the antitrust exemption in place.
Asked by HuffPost if he had asked Reid to drop the measure in exchange for his vote, Nelson demurred. "That would come as a surprise to Harry Reid," he said of multiple reports that he had pushed for it to be left out.
But there's more than one way to push in the Senate and, regardless of whether Nelson raised the issue with Reid, even the Capitol cafeteria workers were aware of Nelson's strong position.
Nelson argues that repealing the exemption wouldn't hurt the big insurers because they're already so big they don't need to collude with each other. Repealing it, he argues, would only hurt the little guys.
But there are very few little guys left: one or two big insurers are dominant in almost every region of the country.
Nelson, now that he has voted to move the bill forward, is still threatening to filibuster a final bill if he finds it objectionable. Nelson and others want the public health insurance option stripped from the Senate bill, but if it goes to conference too friendly to the industry, the antitrust repeal is likely to be in the bill that comes back. For the industry, it's pick your poison.- Posted in
8 Comments so far
Show AllThere is another monopoly that needs discussed, and that is the "safe harbor" protection awarded to hospital Group Purchasing Organizations. In 1986 Congress gave oversight of this legalized monopoly to Health and Human Services. The record since is nothing less that a tragedy for American's need for affordable healthcare.
As far as I know, the matter was last visited by Congress in 2004 via an oversight resolution by Senators Kohl and Dewine. Again oversight was to come from HHS (and look at the board associations of appointees to HHS) and was completely voluntary.
Thus, even though an ever increasing amount of healthcare dollars go to every more monopolistic GPOs, we have no meaningful public oversight of how much they are making.
As far as I can tell, there remain only two, maybe only one, GPO left: Global Healthcare Exchange and Novation of Irving Texas. As far as I can tell, only a very small portion of the profits of the GPOs benefit the hospitals who were supposed to be the beneficiaries of the group purchasing powers.
Not unlike Halliburton, these companies are expanding their business to include food and laundry as well as all hospital supplies and equipment. How can any congressman be serious about containing healthcare costs if they won't even revisit this Frankenstein they created?
The last attempt to investigate really big, organized, insider Medicare fraud ended with the accidental deaths of the two lead prosecutors for Medicare fraud in Texas. The unit of five investigators was subsequently disbanded and, as far as I know, the investigation was dropped.
We do not have a free market, competitive, open and transparent system for purchasing all the material goods needed in our national healthcare system. If we did, it is hard to estimate how much money that would save taxpayers, patients and insurance customers as we currently do not know how much money is currently leaking out this secretive monopoly.
Democrats, you can't ignore stuff like this and call this "reform."
--- Democrats, you can't ignore stuff like this and call this "reform." ---
Yes they can, if they want to be alive to see another election. Why is it so hard to understand that nothing CAN change until banks and large corporations, along with foreign controlled lobbies, are neutralized from the public and political scene.
It's just too easy to blame the puppets. You want change? Go after the puppet masters!
Um, I believe that was the point of my post. I don't know how much more you can go after the puppet masters and not wind up drowned in your pool - or run over on the sidewalk - or commit suicide in a hotel room. I am going after the puppet masters. But since I personally can't compete, I am demanding that congress not be allowed to slink past corruption like this without our noticing. What are you doing?
first off you can't call these people democrats.
they are really the "lite" wing of the fascist
party. there are very few dems. in dc and these
people fight for their political lives every
day in dc. look at what kucinich has to go
through. feingold grayson and the ilk aren't
buddy buddy with ant of these clowns.its dim
for the prospect of freedom enduring much
longer in our third world backwater once
known as america. every nite i look up
to see a new " weather satellite" in the sky
over nyc. the only thing that's going going
change this is getting into the street to get control of our country back!
voting will not get it done because of our
new prepackaged candidates who are the male
version of the stepford wives willing to
do whatever their masters demand! oh
and happy thanks giving. sure our native
americans are going to have a joyous
time on thursday if they were around
today!
The insurance industry needs the protection. How else can they beggar the nation? At least the amount of money they are sucking out of the budget will make it more difficult to finance our wars and military.
A extremely weak argument is made that insurance should be exempt from antitrust enforcement because the more consolidation/collusion the larger the insurance pool, and steadier the munny flows. But this same benefit is touted for carbon trading too, and in both cases it's only a facade. The steadiness of flows is simply a non-issue. The elites love to distract the people from real issues with non-issues for obvious reasons.
Now a large insurance pool is actually beneficial to the people for a reason the elites want buried. A large pool means greater bargaining power, a key tool used by Canada and other countries to produce double the healthcare value in Slave Plantation USA.
The Corporat Caretaker Congruss is up to its usual scheming to distract and confuse the people. We need single payer healthcare because only single payer can negotiate best value from providers, only single payer can minimize the paperwork, profiteering and marketeering of insurance, and only single payer can eliminate insurance racketeers cherry-picking the healthiest/wealthiest recipients. The people's goal is double the healthcare value, and we're not stopping until we achieve it.
Time Magazine's current cover story is "The Decade From Hell".
The health care debacle didn't make their list of "10 worst" events, probably because it's a work in progress.
The article concludes that the next decade will likely bring improvement:
"There's also a natural cycle to history. Unless you believe that this country is in the throes of a deep and permanent decline, there's no question that we will rebound. "Usually when you've had a really bad decade like this one, the next decade turns out to be much better for investors," says Richard Sylla, a professor of economics at the NYU Stern School of Business."
And what is going to drive that excellent rebound?
"At some point, unanticipated positive developments will again drive the market higher: perhaps a sustained easing of tensions between the West and radical Islam, breakthroughs in green technology (think energy sources) or something completely unimagined."
No mention here of prospects for America's working/unemployed people. Just a bit of (mystical) holiday cheer for "investors", CEOs and the racketeers that have replaced our government.
Not to worry. The trickle down will be abundant. (Squat dribbles.)
And lest we overlook health care:
"We have seen the destructiveness of deferral and neglect on infrastructure, national and global politics, financial markets and corporate governance, and I think it's safe to say that the awareness of that danger is much higher now. Maybe that's why, for the first time, a national health care bill actually has a chance to become law."
The Iroquois term for this article would translate "large bull defecates... again".
Anti-Trust regulation worked for years until it stopped being enforced. President Theodore Roosevelt was the one that enforced it more than anyone since. It has not been enforced at all for several years. He also proposed a Health Care Program for everyone. Didn't go anywhere then either.
Also to the person who said that ERISA would prohibit a Public Option being instituted. I would like for that person to tell us what law he is talking about would have to be changed.
I studied that law from beginning to end when it became law in order to see how programs had to be changed to comply. I do not believe there is anything in ERISA that has anything to do with a Public Option or Single Payer. I think that is total bull.
Freddy Braun,
http://insurelifeok.com