Posted on 02/27/2017 2:19:12 PM PST by 54fighting
On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to mark-up H.R. 372, the so-called Competitive Health Insurance Act of 2017 introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), to make crony GOP donors’ regulatory dream a reality.
The Gosar bill would throw conservative principles to the wayside by amending the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945 to bring health insurance companies under federal antitrust oversight…
(Excerpt) Read more at againstcronycapitalism.org ...
We need less regulation, not more — especially antitrust.
It appears that this needs to be passed in order to allow insurance companies to sell across state lines.
To do so will increase competition, which should lead to lower premiums and more policy choices for consumers.
I’m waiting for the final version. States have been seducing old shep for a very long time. A new batch of good old boys might be what they are aiming for. If this regulatory change makes the insurance market open nationally, we will see lots of benefits including exposure of State Insurance Commissioners.
From the mostly uninformative article:
“Thankfully, it appears that the big guns in the Republican Party are already onto Gosar’s statist games. When his bill originally passed under the Democratic controlled Congress, one of its chief opponents was Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.”
So, Ryan is against it. Hmmmm...
The article claims that it violates States Rights. States do not have rights, they have powers.
So the question is, does health insurance cross state lines, so that it is regulatable by Congress?
Under current Supreme Court interpretations, it absolutely is interstate commerce.
On a deeper level, I think it is justified because Congress is attempting to allow it to cross state lines, which is clearly interstate commerce.
The Interstate Commerce clause was meant to prevent states from putting tarriffs on goods crossing state lines. Putting state restrictions on health insurance amounts to the same thing.
It's a very short bill: I read it online and I don't see what's objectionable about it, because I don't see what "free enterprise" and price fixing have to do with one-another.
We also need one nationwide insurance market instead of 50 different sets of regulations plus Federal.
Tenth Amendment of the Constitution be damned.
To do so will increase competition, which should lead to lower premiums and more policy choices for consumers.
It will likely do none of that.
unconscionable.
az gop. stop sending us these fools, please.
a “...we will see lots of benefits including exposure of State Insurance Commissioners.”
I am not usually fond of federal vs, state control of things, but insuring humans from state to state should be done on a federal level. You want some big insurance pools? Go national.
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