The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary has just passed H.R. 3596, The Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act of 2009. The bill will now go to the House for a full vote. The U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary recently held a hearing on the Senate version of the bill. (See, DM 10492). H.R. 3596 passed by recorded vote with a bipartisan margin of 20-9.

Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) expressed approval of the bipartisan vote. "Today's vote is an important step forward toward opening up health and medical malpractice insurance markets to real competition," Conyers stated on the Committee's website. "Joined by three of my Republican colleagues, the House Judiciary Committee agreed to bring antitrust enforcement to the two most abusive practices of the health insurance industry - price fixing and market allocation. Although state regulation of this industry is crucial - and is preserved in this bill - it has proved insufficient to prevent these particularly abusive practices. No one on this committee believes that price fixing or carving up markets is a good thing, and the wide, bipartisan support for this bill's passage reflects this. This measure fixes a mistake sitting on the federal statutes for over sixty years, making an important contribution to the health reform efforts underway in both houses of Congress."

According to the legislative text, the Act's purpose is to ensure that health insurance issuers and medical malpractice insurance issuers cannot engage in price fixing, bid rigging, or market allocations in connection with the conduct of the business of providing health insurance coverage or coverage for medical malpractice claims or actions, to the detriment of competition and consumers.

Read Representative Conyers' statement: http://judiciary.house.gov/news/091021.html

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