WASHINGTON BUREAU — The National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors and the Financial Services Roundtable have teamed with property-casualty groups to oppose a proposal that could give the Federal Trade Commission authority to prepare reports on the entire insurance industry.
The proposed bill also could end the antitrust exemption afforded health insurers and medical malpractice insurers by the McCarran-Ferguson Act.
House leaders expect to take up the FTC authority bill next week.
Lawmakers have been trying for months to get antitrust repeal provisions into the major congressional health reform bills.
Health insurers have argued that the antitrust exemption repeal provisions would have little effect on mergers, acquisitions or pricing decisions in their industry, because state regulators already keep a close eye on competition in the health insurance industry.
But health insurers and p-c insurers have argued that a poorly written exemption repeal bill could interfere with their ability to engage in activities such as compilation of historic loss data.
Medical liability insurance, in particular, is not a health insurance product, but is in fact "a property/casualty insurance liability product, underwritten by property/casualty companies for medical professionals and facilities," according to the members of the coalition that sent the letter, including NAIFA, Falls Church, Va., and the FSR, Washington. "The only thing even health-related about medical malpractice insurance is simply its name and the fact that the medical profession and medical facilities purchase it. Its inclusion in legislation to repeal McCarran-Ferguson for health insurance is misplaced."
Medical malpractice antitrust repeal could reduce competition, by hurting smaller companies' access to the information they need to underwriter their products, the coalition writes.
"Some members of Congress have a mistaken perception that the antitrust provisions of the McCarran-Ferguson Act protect anticompetitive activities by medical liability insurers," the coalition writes. "They do not."
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Kansas City, Mo., has stated that "no state insurance regulator has seen evidence that suggests medical malpractice insurers have engaged or are engaging in price fixing, big rigging, or market allocation," the coalition writes.
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