By a vote of 406-19, the House passed the Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act (HR 4626), introduced by Reps. Tom Perriello (D-VA) and Betsy Markey (D-CO). This bill is designed to restore competition and transparency to the health insurance market – by repealing the blanket antitrust exemption afforded to health insurance companies by the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945. Under this legislation, health insurers will no longer be shielded from legal accountability for price fixing, dividing up territories among themselves, sabotaging their competitors in order to gain monopoly power, and other such anti-competitive practices.Pretty amazing to see so many repugicans vote against their insurance industry benefactors. They must be hoping that the insurance industry controls enough votes in the Senate to kill this bill. But, it is pretty amazing that so many hard-core repugicans didn't want to be seen as supporting protecting the insurers.
Here's the list of the 19 repugican House members who chose to stick with the insurance companies, a cabal that includes some of the worst of the worst in the House repugican caucus. You'll note the Minority Leader is one of them: Akin (KS), Boehner (OH), Brady (TX), Broun (GA), Buyer (IN), Franks (AZ), Garrett (NJ), Jenkins (KS), Jordan (OH), King (IA), Lamborn (CO), Linder (GA), Moran (KS), Paul (TX) Price (GA), Ryan (WI), Sensenbrenner (WI), Tiahrt (KS) and Westmoreland (GA).
This is the second time this week that the "party of NO" said yes. Five repugican Senators voted to end the repugican filibuster of the jobs bill on Monday night. Then, six of the repugican hypocrites who filibustered [Alexander (TN), Cochran (MS), Inhofe (OK), Lemieux (FL), Murkowski (AK) and Wicker (MS)] ended up voting for final passage today.
No comments:
Post a Comment