In 1945, the McCarran-Ferguson Act granted an anti-trust exemption to the insurance industry. Since that time it has been legal for the insurance industry to essentially engage in price fixing. This little known exemption has been as the base of the outlandish rise in health care costs and likely contributes to the excessive costs for insurance more than any other single factor.
The exemption allows the Insurance Cartel, the actual name of a group comprised of Aetna, Cigna, Blue Cross, United Health Care and Well Point, to collude with each other to carve up the market and run it like a monopoly. This explains the reason that one or the other of these companies tends to control and dominate the markets of the various states. They have simply colluded with each other to split up the spoils of their monopoly.
This fact of anti-trust exemption seems to run counter to the cries of competition and free market values being espoused by those opposing health care reform. Anti-trust exemptions are at their very heart contrary to competition.
It is no wonder that health care costs and insurance costs have skyrocketed over the past 60 years. Price fixing and monopolistic practices have never done anything but guarantee profit at the expense of service. The fact that this practice is not being immediately repealed shows that the game is still rigged.
About the only other industry that I can think of that has an anti-trust exemption is baseball. It's exemption is based on the tenuous logic that it is the national pasttime and should be treated differently. The logic behind an anti-trust exemption for health insurance seems even more tenuous. If we are going to have monopolies in health care, let's do it the right way - national health care, run by the government. Oh, I forget, the debate is not about health care, it's about the right of these companies to make a profit.