As Navy Blue Wife explained in her excellent diary, the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945 holds an anti-trust exemption allowing individual states to regulate insurance companies instead of the Federal government. However, this same Act also states that so long as the state regulates the industry, the federal anti-trust laws will not be applicable. This has given the Health Insurance Industry an unfettered market in which to expand, unchecked by the laws that prevent other businesses from monopolizing. This has led to decades of actions by the Insurance industry that, without that exemption, would be in violation of federal law. The end result is higher cost to the customer.
