OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Letter to Senate Colleagues

Date: Jan. 23, 2003
Issues: Health Insurance Health and Health Care

Jan. 23, 2003

Dear Colleague:

We invite you to join us in introducing legislation to ensure that medical malpractice insurers cannot drive up doctors' premiums by engaging in price fixing, bid rigging or market allocations.

It is hardly news that our nation's health care systems are in a state of crisis.  The problems are numerous and the solutions are difficult, but we should be willing and ready to enact the legislation needed to address the genuine problems facing patients and physicians, including rising premiums.

Unfortunately, most of the legislative proposals being bandied about seem likely to reduce health care accountability without lowering malpractice premiums.  In fact, these proposals do nothing to protect physicians and their patients against skyrocketing health care costs.  

We believe that one essential step to lower medical malpractice premiums is to directly address the market behavior of the insurance companies issuing malpractice policies.  The insurance industry has long enjoyed almost complete immunity from the federal antitrust laws under the McCarran-Ferguson Act, 15 U.S.C. 1011-1015.  Using this exemption, insurers can collude to set rates, resulting in higher premiums than true competition would achieve - and because of the exemption, enforcement officials cannot investigate any such collusion.  If Congress is serious about controlling rising premiums, we must eliminate the broad exemption in the McCarran-Ferguson Act.

The attached bill is carefully circumscribed:  It does not suggest full application of the antitrust laws, but is limited to the most pernicious criminal violations - price fixing, bid rigging, and market allocations - and only in connection with the provision of medical malpractice insurance.  It is a cautious, thoughtful, and measured step on the path to a successful revision of our nation's health care systems. 

Please have your staff contact us if you want to cosponsor the "Medical Malpractice Insurance Antitrust Act of 2003."

Sincerely,
                         
PATRICK LEAHY                                                      EDWARD KENNEDY
U.S. Senator                                                                U.S. Senator
                         
RICHARD DURBIN                                                   JOHN EDWARDS
U.S. Senator                                                                U.S. Senator

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