Federal authorities should be given legal power to step in and prosecute misbehaving insurers if state prosecutors can't or won't do the job, a key senator declared last week.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., made his comments during a hearing to examine potential language repealing McCarran-Ferguson Act protection exempting insurers from federal antitrust legislation and making insurance regulation the sole province of the states.
Sen. Specter argued that if the states aren't going to push for criminal prosecutions of insurance companies and their executives, then federal attorneys should be allowed to. "It's not sufficient to say that [state prosecutors] have the authority" to prosecute antitrust cases, he told Marc Racicot, president of the American Insurance Association. "The question is if they are using it."
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