{"id":209,"date":"2021-01-07T12:10:34","date_gmt":"2021-01-07T12:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/healthplan.distilinfo.com\/?p=209"},"modified":"2021-01-07T12:10:36","modified_gmt":"2021-01-07T12:10:36","slug":"congress-is-against-anti-trust-exceptions-over-ahip-objections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/distilinfo.com\/healthplan\/congress-is-against-anti-trust-exceptions-over-ahip-objections\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress is against Anti-Trust Exceptions over AHIP Objections"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Both houses of Congress have voted to repeal an anti-trust exemption in the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945, which protects payers from federal competition laws. The Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act of 2020 received bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"highlights wp-block-list\"><li>No bill to repeal these exemptions has ever passed both houses of Congress. In 2019, Gosar put forward the amendment which passed by a vote of 416 to seven in the House but floundered in the Senate, according to a press release from his office.<\/li><li>Senator Daines shared a frustrated statement, \u201cWhile ordinary Americans are suffering through an unprecedented, deadly pandemic, multi-billion dollar health insurance companies are boasting record-high profits.\u201d<\/li><li>Payers were not receptive to the Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act of 2020. \u201cEvery American deserves access to affordable coverage that provides them with access to high-quality health care,\u201d Matt Eyles, president and chief executive officer of America\u2019s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), said in a statement.<\/li><li>&nbsp;\u201cThe McCarran-Ferguson Act recognized that all health care is local and that states should be able to govern their own health insurance markets,\u201d Eyles said. \u201cAt no time has that been more evident than during the COVID-19 crisis. States have always exercised great authority in ensuring fair and competitive markets that delivered consumer choice.\u201d<\/li><li>There certainly is precedent for Eyles\u2019s expectations of costly litigation related to insurers\u2019 anti-trust lawsuits. Only, a little over a month prior to this statement, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association finally ended eight-year-long anti-trust litigation in a $2.67 billion settlement. \u201cRemoval of the McCarran-Ferguson exemptions ignores those cost drivers while raising costs and will only result in coverage being less affordable,\u201d Eyles concluded.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Both houses of Congress have voted to repeal an anti-trust exemption in the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945, which protects payers&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/distilinfo.com\/healthplan\/congress-is-against-anti-trust-exceptions-over-ahip-objections\/\" style=\"white-space: nowrap;\">Continue Reading <i class=\"fas fa-long-arrow-alt-right\" style=\"vertical-align: middle;\"><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-distilinfo-originals","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/distilinfo.com\/healthplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/distilinfo.com\/healthplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/distilinfo.com\/healthplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/distilinfo.com\/healthplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/distilinfo.com\/healthplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/distilinfo.com\/healthplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":211,"href":"https:\/\/distilinfo.com\/healthplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions\/211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/distilinfo.com\/healthplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/distilinfo.com\/healthplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/distilinfo.com\/healthplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/distilinfo.com\/healthplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}