Chris Sagers (Cleveland State University – Cleveland-Marshall College of Law) has posted Much Ado About Probably Pretty Little: Mccarran-Ferguson Repeal in the Pending Health Reform Legislation (Yale Law & Policy Review, Vol. 28, 2010) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
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One little noticed side-line in this year's contentious health reform debate has been the effort contained within it to repeal the 60 year old antitrust exemption for the insurance industry, as it would apply to health and medical malpractice insurers. This short essay will ask two questions: (1) what consequences the pending repeal measures might have in the now fairly unlikely event that they do become law, and (2) what a close examination of this effort might have to teach us about the general business of MFA repeal and competition in insurance. In short, the lessons are that the pending repeal efforts, however superficially desirable they might seem, are likely to accomplish precious little in and of themselves, but also that there might be significant value in going ahead with them in the longer term.