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House votes to kill antitrust exemption for health insurers
CNN ^ | February 24, 2010 4:55 p.m. EST

Posted on 02/24/2010 2:43:28 PM PST by Former Military Chick

Washington (CNN) -- The House voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to repeal the antitrust exemption currently granted to health insurance companies.

The vote was 406-19 to repeal the exemption, which has been in place since the end of World War II. The 19 who voted against the repeal are Republicans.

Liberal Democrats have said a repeal would help inject competition into the health care industry while reducing consumer costs.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Tuesday that President Obama strongly supports the repeal. "At its core, health reform is all about ensuring that American families and businesses have more choices, benefit from more competition and have greater control over their own health care," Gibbs said.

(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...


TOPICS: Breaking News; Government; Politics/Elections
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To: Eroteme

Follow the money trail to find out why. My guess is that just one or two Ins. Co.s are big donors to this group.


41 posted on 02/24/2010 3:32:29 PM PST by papasmurf (sudo apt-get install U-S-Constitution)
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To: ari-freedom

My thoughts, exactly.

Now, about that no entangling relationships thing...


42 posted on 02/24/2010 3:33:17 PM PST by papasmurf (sudo apt-get install U-S-Constitution)
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To: Former Military Chick

If you look at the American health insurance industry under today’s current environment (with anti-trust) companies are merging and raising rates because of increasing regulation by states, e.g., pre-existing conditions regulations, disallowance of underwriting before writing coverage, etc.

Repealing the anti-trust exemption does not change the current financial state of insurance payers, it makes the single-payer system almost inevitable regardless or not whether Americans want it. If we want to end up with a giant single payer-plan, we will never get even the services provided by the private companies who have public stock to sell.

How many Americans are employed by the health insurance industry - and their suppliers... soon, unemployed or worse employed by the government, just like the car cos and banks.


43 posted on 02/24/2010 3:34:17 PM PST by LurkedLongEnough
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To: Former Military Chick; Jet Jaguar; NorwegianViking; ExTexasRedhead; HollyB; FromLori; ...
Thanks for the heads up, Military Chick

the list, ping

44 posted on 02/24/2010 3:34:41 PM PST by Nachum (The complete Obama list at www.nachumlist.com)
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To: kcvl

Being an expert in this area, I can tell you that this is not what it appears. The antitrust exemption allows small companies to merge their statistics in order to estimate loss costs. That allows more companies to compete. Without that exemption, small companies wouldn’t know whqat premiums to charge, so they wouldn’t compete.

In practice, this kind of merged statistics is very important in many lines of insurance, such as fire or liability, but is not significant in Health insurance. In short, this law will have little effect. To the degree it has an effect, it will be to reduce competition.


45 posted on 02/24/2010 3:35:18 PM PST by december12
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To: Carley

Same here Carley....Only think I can think is that the GOP wanted to be able to say that they are not the party of NO and coopertated on a facet they thought needed redone, but didn’t want to support it 100%, so they designated certain “safe” seats to vote yea.....

I just hope each individual Rep wears a wire and catches O underhanded threats and promises.


46 posted on 02/24/2010 3:35:49 PM PST by hoosiermama (ONLY DEAD FISH GO WITH THE FLOW.......I am swimming with Sarahcudah! Sarah has read the tealeaves.)
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To: Tucsonican

Well it gets worse. Now the insurance companies will face anti-trust liability for decisions they didn’t make. Remember every state has a state insurance board dictating what insurance companies can and cannot do, even dictating what premiums they can charge. The courts often refuse to allow “the government made me do it” as a defense since you could have opted out of doing business in the first place.


47 posted on 02/24/2010 3:38:10 PM PST by SeeSharp
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To: DannyTN
The Democrats voted "for" simply because they don't believe it'll ever go into effect. They plan to get there first with Obamacare and burn the playing field to the ground.

The 19 Republicans who voted against it may have done so just to "pimp" the Democrats.

48 posted on 02/24/2010 3:40:15 PM PST by muawiyah ("Git Out The Way")
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To: Former Military Chick

...”the secretary could overrule state insurance regulators”.....

One guy from BO’s admin. to “overrule states authority” is never a good thing!


49 posted on 02/24/2010 3:41:38 PM PST by caww
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To: what's up
It all depends on who maintains control of Congress in Nov

Hopefully we the people will control Congress starting in November.

50 posted on 02/24/2010 3:45:37 PM PST by LuvFreeRepublic (Support our military or leave. I will help you pack BO!)
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To: Eroteme; All

So people like Tom Price, who really understands what this exemption does, voted against it. I’m not surprised.

People, this exemption is there so that companies can share actuarial data so that they can better compute rates. With out that data, actuarial uncertainty increases, therefore risk increases, therefore rates increase.

Brilliant.


51 posted on 02/24/2010 3:48:41 PM PST by FreedomPoster (No Representation without Taxation!)
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To: what's up

At the end of the article it says BOS Czar can overrule the states regulations.


52 posted on 02/24/2010 3:49:30 PM PST by caww
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To: pfflier

I don’t know enough about it to say, but if the libs and oscuma are for it then I’m agin it.


53 posted on 02/24/2010 3:53:00 PM PST by Scotsman will be Free (11C - Indirect fire, infantry - High angle hell - We will bring you, FIRE)
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To: SeeSharp

Ding!

Thomas Sowell does a nice exposition on that, I believe in Basic Economics.


54 posted on 02/24/2010 3:57:46 PM PST by FreedomPoster (No Representation without Taxation!)
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To: Former Military Chick

The biggest force for anti-competitive trust-building in health insurance is the Federal government.


55 posted on 02/24/2010 3:59:25 PM PST by RightOnTheLeftCoast (Obama: running for re-election in '12 or running for Mahdi now? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi])
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To: Former Military Chick

The cronyism in the Toyota raid and now this; they are not even bothering to hide their fascist side at all


56 posted on 02/24/2010 4:04:47 PM PST by GeronL (Political Philosophy: I Own Me (yep, boiled down to 6 letters))
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To: Former Military Chick

the only big entity allowed is the Federal Government.


57 posted on 02/24/2010 4:06:06 PM PST by plain talk
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To: pfflier

The fascism is coming. This and the Toyota thing. Same day, wow.

Government showing its jack boots.


58 posted on 02/24/2010 4:06:08 PM PST by GeronL (Political Philosophy: I Own Me (yep, boiled down to 6 letters))
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To: Former Military Chick

Unfortunately, I would rather there be no anti-trust legislation at all for any market. Let customers decide. People said Microsoft was a monopoly, but Google took its cake.

The only monopolies our country has known are de facto monopolies that government imposes, such as water, electricity, etc.


59 posted on 02/24/2010 4:14:18 PM PST by ConservativeMind (Hypocrisy: "Animal rightists" who eat meat & pen up pets while accusing hog farmers of cruelty.)
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To: SeeSharp

Exactly! That’s just what I wrote.


60 posted on 02/24/2010 4:14:57 PM PST by ConservativeMind (Hypocrisy: "Animal rightists" who eat meat & pen up pets while accusing hog farmers of cruelty.)
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