House Takes Long Overdue Antitrust Action Aimed At Big Insurance Giants

The greedy obstructionists hated them too-- but its the right company to keep

I bet it'll never be signed into law, but the Insurance Industry-- you know, the fellas who have spent $322,552,112 since 1990 bribing members of Congress (and another $1.2 billion on "lobbying" them)-- received what amounts to a slam across the mouth with the back end of a shovel yesterday when John Conyers' House Judiciary Committee voted 20-9 to repeal the antitrust exemptions the Insurance Industry crooks have gotten for so long in return for their massive bribes to members of Congress. That means-- or it would if the full House, the Senate Judiciary Committee, the full Senate and then the president all gets on board, something that is so unlikely I don't know why I'm fantasizing about it-- that the shady characters draining billions of dollars a year out of Americans' pockets in their health insurance scams would be liable for penalties if they continue their price fixing and other corrupt practices.

Conyers' bill, H.R. 3596 is meant to repeal "portions of the 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act that allows states to regulate health insurance providers without federal intervention. But critics of the law say that 64 years after its passage, the result has been regional monopolies that inflate premiums and discriminate against people based on their health status, gender and other factors."

17 Democrats and 3 Republicans voted in favor with 9 Republicans earning beaucoup d'argent from the Insurance lobbyists today by voting "no." Meanwhile 7 Democrats and 4 Republicans managed to avoid voting on the highly charged, controversial measure. The 3 unlikely Republicans to cross the aisle and vote with the Democrats were all arch-conservatives, Dan Lungren (R-CA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Tom Rooney (R-FL), who have rarely ever voted in their constituents' best interests in their entire careers.

In a letter sent to Conyers this morning, Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade group, disputed the legislation's necessity. "We believe that health insurers have not been engaging in anticompetitive conduct and that McCarran-Ferguson does not provide a shield for such conduct," Ignagni wrote. "Thus, the bills attempt to remedy a problem that does not exist.

She also warned that "injecting a second regulatory scheme" at the federal level, on top of a vast array of state insurance laws, could create serious confusion for the industry. "We ask you to consider our strong concerns that such legal uncertainty could chill or limit newly developing activities that will benefit consumers and doctors . . . and add to the already substantial cost that litigation imposes on the health care system," Ignagni wrote.

But lawmakers who are pressing for repeal said the exemption is outdated, adopted in a day when insurance companies were small, local firms -- not the major businesses they have become. "Insurance companies, especially health insurers, are national players," said  Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). "They operate in states across the country. And they don't have a mere presence in these states; they dominate the market."

"We all pay the cost for this," said Senate Judiciary Chairman  Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), whose committee has held a hearing on the issue, and said he would seek to add the exemption repeal as an amendment to the Senate health-care bill when in reaches the chamber floor, likely in early November.

"Patients pay the cost. Doctors pay the cost. And this is one of the very few industries that's used its clout and its money and its lobbying to keep this exemption," said Leahy.

Many observers see this as the White House finally getting tough on these crooks and allowing reform-minded Democrats like Conyers loose on Industry miscreants as payback for the insurance companies breaking their pledge to support-- and not attack-- the moderate reform package Obama has been pressing Congress to deliver. He saved them from single payer and they returned the favor by stabbing him in the back and spending millions of dollars to undermine his positions. Now there are rumors floating around that Obama may even be semi-serious about his much-ballyhooed crack down on lobbyists. Who knows? Maybe polling is telling him that voters were serious about all that Change and Hope stuff he mentioned during the campaign.



UPDATE: Elizabeth Warren For President?

Matt Taibbi, like many progressives who have been paying close attention, is about ready to give up on Obama and his cronies in the White House. He thinks Elizabeth Warren would make a much better president. When it comes to Obama's handling of the financial crisis, Taibbi makes some important points, points based on his knowledge that the Democrats are "more afraid of losing the financial support of Wall Street and the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry than it is of losing progressive voters":

[H]e came into office amidst sweeping crises in the financial sector and did not do what needed to be done, and what had been done the last time the U.S. was sent careening into a depression because of Wall Street: he failed to push for tough financial reforms. Barack Obama needed to be the FDR figure who remade the American capital markets and made them fair again, and he barely laid a finger on the whole scene.

Instead, he put the people who created the problem in charge of fixing the mess, and ended up bailing them out instead of the rest of the country, at huge current and (presumably) future cost.The total bill for the Bush-Obama bailout is certainly above ten trillion at this point-- Inspector General Neil Barofsky thinks it might hit nearly $24 trillion ultimately-- and this went through without much fanfare. Meanwhile, the congress is stuck in the mud, panicked at the thought of paying three or four trillion over a decade or so for a health care program.