The McCarran - Ferguson Act Anticompetitive or Procompetitive ?

The McCarran-Ferguson Act provides a limited exemption to the insurance industry from the federal antitrust laws. The act provides that the Sherman Act, the Clayton Act, and the Federal Trade Commission Act apply to the business of insurance "to the extent that such business is not regulated by state law." That limited exemption from federal antitrust law does not extend to "any agreement to boycott, coerce or intimidate, or act of boycott, coercion, or intimidation." The act also declares that the business of insurance shall be subject to regulation and taxation by the states. After passage of the act in 1945, all states enacted some form of rate regulation to qualify for the exemption. The practical import of the antitrust exemption has been eroded in recent years as courts have narrowed the definition of the business of insurance and broadened the definition of boycott and as an increasing number of states have subjected the industry to state antitrust law. Proposals to repeal the McCarran-Ferguson Act have been a familiar feature of the Washington scene for many years. But pressure has mounted