Harry Reid, facing questions about his toughness in the health care debate, just held an event where he announced that he would strip the insurance industry of the anti-trust law exemption they gained in the 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act.

Leahy, Schumer and I will announce today @ 11:30am ET that we will strip the health ins industry of its exemption from antritrust laws.

The AP wrote a story on this earlier today. I’m trying to nail down whether this means the repeal will be included in the overall Senate bill or whether Reid will seek it in a separate bill. It seems more likely that it would just get included.

Overally, Reid will rise or fall among most progressive groups on whether he includes a public option in the Senate bill that will hit the floor. But with no other news coming out about Senate negotiations, this announcement represents the strongest statement thus far that Reid is willing to play tough with the insurance companies.

I wrote a long piece about what repealing the industry’s anti-trust exemption would actually do on Monday. Today, the House Judiciary Committee is marking up the bill that would repeal the anti-trust exemption. No word on whether Speaker Pelosi would want to include that measure in the House bill.

More when I get it…

UPDATE: Jacki Schechner from Health Care For America Now sends this along:

We are supportive of the measure to strip the insurance industry of their exemption, and we’re glad Sen. Reid is doing it.

Patrick Leahy is speaking about this on MSNBC right now. He says “this item will be voted one way or the other in the final bill.” It’s unclear whether he means it will be allowed as an amendment or included in the Senate bill on the floor. It’s a HUGE difference; if it’s in the bill, it would take an amendment with a 60-vote threshold to take it out, but if it’s not, it would take an amendment with a 60-vote threshold to put it in.

Again, I’m trying to get an answer on this…

UPDATE II: The House Judiciary Committee just passed out of committee a bill to repeal the insurance industry’s anti-trust exemption by a BIPARTISAN vote of 20-9, with three Republicans supporting. Some Republicans support repealing the exemption as a means to allow interstate sale of insurance, which in their formation could lead to jurisdiction shopping, like what we see in the credit card industry (everyone puts their HQs in South Dakota and Delaware to avoid as much state regulation as possible). Committee Chairman John Conyers released this statement:

“Today’s vote is an important step forward toward opening up health insurance markets to real competition,” said Conyers. “Joined by three of my Republican colleagues, the House Judiciary Committee agreed to bring antitrust enforcement to the two most abusive practices of the health insurance industry – price fixing and market allocation. Although state regulation of this industry is crucial – and is preserved in this bill – it has proved insufficient to prevent these particularly abusive practices. No one on this Committee believes that price fixing or carving up markets is a good thing, and the wide, bipartisan support for this bill’s passage reflects this. This measure fixes a mistake sitting on the federal statutes for over sixty years, making an important contribution to the health reform efforts underway in both houses of Congress.”

UPDATE: Very interesting to note who joined Democrats in passing the repeal: Dan Lungren (R-CA), Tom Rooney (R-FL) and Louie Gohmert (R-TX) of “one in five people have to die from Democratic health care reform” fame. Not exactly a moderate bunch.