Health insurance companies are exempt from anti trust laws

[Spytheweb]

Competition law, known in the United States as antitrust law, has three main elements:
prohibiting agreements or practices that restrict free trading and competition between business entities. This includes in particular the repression of cartels.
banning abusive behavior by a firm dominating a market, or anti-competitive practices that tend to lead to such a dominant position. Practices controlled in this way may include predatory pricing, tying, price gouging, refusal to deal, and many others.
supervising the mergers and acquisitions of large corporations, including some joint ventures. Transactions that are considered to threaten the competitive process can be prohibited altogether, or approved subject to "remedies" such as an obligation to divest part of the merged business or to offer licenses or access to facilities to enable other businesses to continue competing.


The federal government has not been able to attack the insurance companies through federal anti-trust laws for over 60 years. Under the McCarran-Ferguson Act passed in 1945, insurance companies (and Major League Baseball!) are specifically excluded from federal anti-trust laws as long as the state regulates in that area, and federal anti-trust laws will apply ONLY in cases of boycott, coercion, and intimidation.

Under the McCarran-Ferguson Act, Big Insurance is allowed to collect and SHARE data with each other about claims. With this information, Big Insurance can fix prices, set coverage requirements, outline conditions for coverage denials (like pre-existing conditions), and many, many more.

http://www.mydd.com/story/2009/8/17/21730/8042

 

[Willie99]

"state regulations"

if anyone ever shopped for health insurance, you would know everything STW just suggested is not happening.

Sometimes, you just need a little experience. Critical thinking helps.

Now if you want insurance that sets prices and imposes restrictions, that would be a single payer plan & socialized medicine.

Talk about a monopoly.

Where do they come from?

 

[ProPokerPlayer]

The federal government has not been able to attack the insurance companies through federal anti-trust laws for over 60 years

Good god man what part of 'they are regulated by the states" do you not understand.....Sure the federal govt cant do anything directly but IF THERE WAS ANY ANTI TRUST VIOLATIONS the states could........The reason there are none is......read this carefully and maybe slowly......THERE ARE NO FUCKING ANTI TRUST REGULATIONS TO PROSECUTE!!!!!

But wait...what can the federal govt do?????? They can issue mandates....which they have done a gazillion times which is why the insurance industry (and the education industry) is in such rotten shape today..

What these michael moore believing morons dont understand and apparently never could have the mental capacity to understand is that EXACTLY LIKE THE HOUSING CRISIS....GOVT REGULATIONS ARE WHAT HAS CAUSED THE INCREASE IN HEALTH CARE COSTS OVER THE YEARS.

God its the same bullshit over and fucking over.....these dumbasses believe EVERY LINE OF BULLSHIT they are told without ever thinking anything thru for themselves..thats how we end up with an all star team made up of international America haters as well as domestic America haters running America......into the ground i might add..

 

[Spytheweb]

The origins of this credit crunch—maybe even a crisis—reside, by all accounts, in the housing market. Big banks bought up a lot of sub-prime mortgages, then bundled them into portfolios that could be sold downstream as reliably income-producing assets. Thus mortgage debt was “securitized,” made into something hedge funds and private equity firms, and even stodgy mutual funds, could buy into as an investment, not as a side bet. When the housing market flattened out, that is, when prices and construction began to fall and when foreclosure rates began to rise over the last two years—even with interest rates relatively steady—this mortgage debt suddenly looked dubious.

The bubble burst, in short, when everybody realized that the long-term inflation of residential real estate prices, which started about a decade ago, was over.

Why does health care cost too much?

A new report from consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers identifies how the $1.2 trillion in annual waste breaks down. CNNMoney.com identifies six areas totaling nearly $500 billion that stand out as issues to be dealt with in the health care reform debate:

Too many tests -- $210 billion a year wasted
Inefficient claim processing -- $210 billion
Using the ER as a clinic -- $14 billion
Medical errors -- $17 billion
Discharged patients too soon -- $25 billion
Infections from hospital stays -- $3 billion

 

[Spytheweb]

"state regulations"

if anyone ever shopped for health insurance, you would know everything STW just suggested is not happening.

Sometimes, you just need a little experience. Critical thinking helps.

Now if you want insurance that sets prices and imposes restrictions, that would be a single payer plan & socialized medicine.

Talk about a monopoly.

Where do they come from?

The inability of a popular president with substantial majorities in Congress to pass a progressive health bill is immensely frustrating to healthcare activists, and to all who gave Obama a mandate for change.

But their cause is not lost – they just need a new strategy.

Given the corporate world's disproportionate influence over Washington, it is time to take the fight for public healthcare away from Congress and into statehouses across the country.

State governments are typically far more democratic that the federal government and the public has a much greater ability to penetrate the debate. Moreover, in some states there are already legislatures and grass-roots movements that are working to make a statewide "single-payer plan" – similar to Canada's national health coverage – a reality.

Two state legislatures – Vermont and California – have, in fact, passed single-payer legislation in recent years only to have them vetoed by Republican governors. But California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) is ineligible to run for a third term and Gov. Jim Douglas (R) of Vermont has decided not to seek reelection. Either of these states could soon become the first to pass a statewide, public healthcare system that covers everyone.

"I think it makes sense to push for single-payer on a state-wide level," says Dr. Deb Richter, founder of Vermont Health Care for All. "It looks pretty grim in Washington ... so we are mobilizing our forces."

Healthcare activists in Vermont are now advocating for single-payer bills in the Senate and the House and plan to highlight the issue for the 2010 gubernatorial campaign. The Vermont Workers' Center is more than a year into a "Healthcare Is a Human Right" campaign that is releasing reports and organizing rallies all over the state.

"We think this could really happen here," says James Haslam, director of the Vermont Workers' Center. "There is a lot of excitement around this issue. Vermont could become a model for the rest of the country."

Indeed, Vermont may be the state best suited to tackle single-payer. According to a study commissioned by the Vermont Legislature in 2006, Vermont would save $51 million a year if it switched to single-payer. The state is also home to a supportive congressional delegation. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, has introduced legislation in the Senate that would enable states to have single-payer systems of their own.

There are also strong prospects for single-payer healthcare in California, where the legislature has twice passed single-payer, only to have it vetoed both times by Governor Schwarzenegger.

But Schwarzenegger has served two terms and will be replaced in 2010, a fact that has emboldened grass-roots activists. "The governor's race is the next stage for the single-payer battle in California," says Chuck Idelson, a spokesman for the California Nurses Association, which has been fighting for single-payer for years. "We need to elect a candidate that is open to single-payer."

 

[Willie99]

"mandate for change"

right, they voted out a party that was is power for 8 years, after an unpopular war and after a credit crisis.

Everything Obama campaigned on was a lie.

Integrity, bipartisanship, transparency, review of bills, ethics, fiscal responsibility, end the wars,

not one significant promise kept

Once again, the left misrepresenting the truth. Health Care was very very very low on American minds in 2008. It was the economy and the wars.

Obviously, there was no mandate for this nonsense he's trying to pass. you see, if there was, his numbers wouldn't be in a free fall while the GOP has an unexpected resurgence.

the truth is out there, you just gotta think a little. Not gonna find it in the media or on the internet.

 

[ProPokerPlayer]

Willie i think we just have to come to terms with the fact that well over 50% of the people inside the borders of this country at any given moment are as dumb as a fucking wall..

How stupid would have to be to see a AMERICA with 20% unemployment, 20 Trillion in Debt, fighting an unwinnable war against ghosts, ghosts demonstrating in the streets AND STILL be stupid enough to believe that HEALTHCARE is the biggest problem this country needs to be tackiling right now.
They are fools and we might have to face the fact soon we are all about to face the consequences of their ignorance ....

 

[Spytheweb]

Willie i think we just have to come to terms with the fact that well over 50% of the people inside the borders of this country at any given moment are as dumb as a fucking wall..

How stupid would have to be to see a AMERICA with 20% unemployment, 20 Trillion in Debt, fighting an unwinnable war against ghosts, ghosts demonstrating in the streets AND STILL be stupid enough to believe that HEALTHCARE is the biggest problem this country needs to be tackiling right now.
They are fools and we might have to face the fact soon we are all about to face the consequences of their ignorance ....

Outsourcing jobs for years, Bush had a surplus when he came into office, and the wars have been going on for 8 and 7 and a half years, what's new here? A black President.

No joke.

 

[Willie99]

now you think Bush is responsible for Obama doubling the debt withing a mere few months, priceless

it has nothing to do with the massive amount of money he's spent, or how his stimulus only stimulated more unemployment and his policies have a direct impact on slowing tax revenues

it's all Bush's fault

Sorry your boy was so fucking wrong. Anything he said would happen by this time was wrong, wrong & wrong.
If Obama made a prediction about how anything would be as of 9/15/2009, he was wrong.

Of course, anyone with a lick of how business works knew that would be the case. You see, at the end of the day, the POTUS doesn't micro-manage worldwide events. He can, however, implement policies that slow business. that's what this guy wants to do. Make us more like Europe, I guess he thinks they have "perfected themselves", where 10% unemployment is good.