Providing For Consideration Of H.R. 4626, Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act

Floor Speech

Providing For Consideration Of H.R. 4626, Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act

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Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, for 65 years health insurance companies have enjoyed a special interest exemption from laws prohibiting price fixing, bid rigging, and carving up the insurance market. Consumers' health insurance premiums go up, while coverage gets worse and worse. In the past six years, health insurance premiums have increased at a rate four times the increase in the average American worker's wages.

Twenty-seven years ago, as a young Texas State Senator, I authored the Texas Free Enterprise and Antitrust Act. But one industry, one industry among all others, was exempted because of this Federal law. So no action could be taken against the anticompetitive practices of one industry.

the insurance industry. And we see the results. In the last decade, health insurance premiums in Texas have gone up over 100 percent.

Protecting consumers and fostering competition are American values. Families and small businesses will benefit when the health care industry has to compete like other industries. With this reform and a newly reinvigorated Department of Justice, which forgot about antitrust enforcement under the Bush administration, together we can now have the oversight that was overlooked for eight years under that administration.

Hopefully, President Obama will correct a major omission in the health care legislation that he proposed by including this vital reform--repeal of the antitrust loophole for the health insurance industry. It is time for competition. It is time for open markets. And it is time to block the closed-door collusion that Americans are paying for in higher and higher premiums by letting competition work.

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