Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, for months we have been debating how to improve the health care system. We have focused on two major goals: One is increasing the number of those who have coverage, and the second major goal is doing what we can to reduce the costs for those that do. One way, obviously, to accomplish these goals is to increase competition. In fact, it's one of the few areas where, in this debate, we have seen bipartisanship. There have been recommendations, various recommendations, on how to do that. One is the bill that we have today. There have been other suggestions, allowing for competition across State lines.

The point is we all know that one of the ways to accomplish the major goals that we seek to accomplish is to create competition, and that is what this bill does. We need to ask the question: Why would we allow this exemption to continue when we do not do that for other industries? Why would we do that when no public interest is served by doing so?

Now, this may not be the silver bullet, but certainly everyone agrees that in order to improve our health care system, we must increase competition. That's not a partisan issue. That's what this bill does. And for that reason, I ask my colleagues to support it.

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