The saying it aint over till its over may well apply to the ongoing discussion over anticompetitive behavior by insurance companies.
This week, Reps. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., and Peter DeFazio D-Ore., introduced H.R. 1583, the Insurance Industry Competition Act, which would repeal the McCarron-Ferguson Act and grant the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission the legal authority to apply antitrust laws to insurers anticompetitive behavior.
This is not the first time that Taylor and DeFazio have introduced similar bills to Congress, having put forth a similar bill in 2007. Citing the indignation over bonuses paid to American International Group Inc. employees, the two cite the need for action on the antitrust issue.
The current insurance industry antitrust exemption gave AIG a free pass to become too big to fail, and now the U.S taxpayers are on the hook to bail them out or risk even further turmoil in an already fragile economy, Taylor and DeFazio said in a statement posted on Law360.com. This legislation would close that exemption.
Taylor has been actively criticizing the insurance industry for some time; sources say his actions are tied to how the industry managed claims during Hurricane Katrina. Taylors Bay St. Louis, Miss. home was damaged in 2005. In a recent development, Taylor introduced a bill adding windstorm coverage to the National Flood Insurance Program.
