The Senate Must Repeal The Antitrust Exemption

[ProSense]

The Senate Must Repeal The Antitrust Exemption

by Turkana

Now is not a time to be resting on laurels. Now is a time to be building on momentum. The Republicans and their enablers will try to repeal the new health insurance law, and lacking the ability to do that, they will try to repeal the law's best aspects. We have to make clear not only that there is no turning back, but that the real work lies ahead. The goal is for all Americans to have access to quality health care. We must not be satisfied until that goal is attained.

Even most of the law's most avid advocates admit that it is flawed. The flaws are not that it goes too far, but that it doesn't go far enough. The Republicans and their enablers deserve most of the blame, for that; but we have to keep working to move health care reform forward. The first steps, for now, should be the best steps to plug the loopholes in the new law. The quickest and most obvious of those steps is to repeal the insurance industry antitrust exemption. It's good policy and it's good politics.

President Obama wants to repeal the antitrust exemption. By an overwhelming 406-19 margin, the House already voted to repeal the antitrust exemption. All that's left is for the Senate to vote for the repeal, and it will be done. This shouldn't be difficult.

That huge House margin speaks for itself. The politics of the repeal is obvious. Even Republicans know that they can't justify an antitrust exemption for a despised rapacious industry. They also know that they can't continue to get away with even pretending to believe in market-based solutions, if they're allowing those markets to be controlled and manipulated by a narrow few. Bring the repeal to the Senate floor, and it will pass. Bring the repeal to the Senate floor.

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[LeftyAndProud60]

1. Now this will be real change. Why hasn't the Senate voted for this? NT

[lyonn]

2. What's holding the Senate up on this issue?

Don't know exactly how it works but believe it would be critical to cost controls.

Edit: via Wikipedia

"The law attempts to prevent the artificial raising of prices by restriction of trade or supply.<5> In other words, innocent monopoly, or monopoly achieved solely by merit, is perfectly legal, but acts by a monopolist to artificially preserve his status, or nefarious dealings to create a monopoly, are not. Put another way, it has sometimes been said that the purpose of the Sherman Act is not to protect competitors, but rather to protect competition and the competitive landscape. As explained by the U.S. Supreme Court in Spectrum Sports, Inc. v. McQuillan:"

[eridani]

3. Yes. It should have. But the insurance companies didn't want that, so

--it didn't happen.

[inna]

4. A post worth recommending, for once.