In my last blog, The McCarran-Ferguson – Expanded, I spoke at length about how the McCarran-Ferguson Insurance Regulation Act declared that continued regulation and taxation of the insurance industry by the states was in public interest. Pursuant to this policy, the Act exempts the business of insurance from the federal anti-trust statutes to the extent that state law regulates the insurance industry.1 Section 3(b) of the McCarran-Ferguson Act, however, provides an exception to this exemption by excluding from the statute’s protective shield acts and agreement amounting to boycott, intimidation, or coercion.2 This section was enacted to prevent a recurrence of anticompetitive practices characterized by the United States v. South-Easter Underwriters Association (South Eastern Underwriters) court as “boycott, coercion, and intimidation.”
Continue Reading Insurance Anti-Trust and The McCarren-Ferguson Act: Boycotts
