Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. DELAURO. Mr. Speaker, this past summer, in my home state of Connecticut, Anthem tried to raise health insurance premiums by up to 32 percent. Right now, in California, the same company is trying to pull the same trick--trying to increase their rates by as much as 39 percent.

Unfortunately, we now know that the top five insurers in America saw record-breaking profits in 2009. We have seen increases in profits of 91 percent at WeIlPoint, and a whopping 346 percent at Cigna.

How is this happening, in the midst of an historic recession? A lot of reasons, and central among them the fact that, according to long-established antitrust standards, there is no real competition in the insurance market today. In fact, there have been more than 400 mergers among health insurers in the past 14 years. So, insurers get away with price-gouging mainly because they can.

We have coddled this industry far too long. It is time to remove insurers' special antitrust exemption and to make them play on the same level playing field as every other business in America. I hope that all my colleagues who consistently espouse the virtues of a free market will join us in passing this bill today.

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