Reply #31: All insurance companies - all forms of insurance - enjoy the anti-trust exemption

[merh]

After Katrina, the insurance companies all got together and agreed to deny all claims if surge/rising waters were involved. It was a blanket denial, the policy holders had to fight to get their claims paid. (The first bailout of the Bush admin was the Katrina grant program that took the heat off the insurance companies.)

The only legislation I support that my blue dog dem congress critter has been trying to get passed since Katrina is the all perils insurance legislation. It would repeal the anti-trust exemption for all insurance.

The McCarran-Ferguson Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1011, is a United States federal law that allows state law to regulate the business of insurance without federal government interference. The McCarran-Ferguson Act was passed by Congress in 1945 after the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Association that insurance could be regulated by the federal government via the Commerce Clause (the overturned case stated that the federal government had this power), or, in other words, that insurance was interstate commerce.

The Act also provides that federal anti-trust laws will not apply to the "business of insurance" as long as the state regulates in that area, but federal anti-trust laws will apply in cases of boycott, coercion, and intimidation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran-Ferguson_Act