However, the fact is that the deck was clearly stacked against the industry that day. Critics of the business had their minds already made up, and nothing Bob Hartwig or anyone else could say was going to change their guilty verdict. They weren't about to let the facts get in the way of a good insurer bashing. Bob became a straw man, symbolic of an industry that can make statistics prove anything, while policyholders were unfairly ruined by Katrina–including some prominent members of Congress leading the charge against insurers, such as Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss.

The open assumption by many on the Congressional panel was that insurance companies had not served policyholders well in Mississippi–that most adjusters had been pressured to change their stories to deny coverage, that all policies were written to unfairly keep consumers from collecting, and that the industry's federal antitrust exemption was allowing carriers to get away with collusion and other anticompetitive behavior.

It was an Alice In Wonderland scenario, with reality hard to fathom through the distorted prism of Congressional politics.

That said, I stick with my earlier assessment that insurers can weather this storm if they play rope-a-dope with Congress. This strategy was first employed by Muhammad Ali against George Foreman in the heavyweight championship boxing match of 1974. The older, wiser Ali was able to wear out the stronger but more easily-winded Foreman by simply absorbing body blows until the doomed champ punched himself out.

Insurers need to similarly hold their ground, sticking to the facts and warning about the consequences of simply stripping away the antitrust exemption. They must keep emphasizing how a reckless, shortsighted, knee-jerk reaction would in the long run do consumers more harm than good.

Bob Hartwig and company will take more than their fair share of rhetorical blows in this war of words, but I believe Congress will grow arm-weary as attention is diverted to more important agenda items involving the industry, such as renewing the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act.

Frankly, I don't think Congress has the stamina to see this fight through, or the stomach for the fallout that would result from foolishly killing the McCarran-Ferguson exemption. They simply haven't thought through what would happen next, or considered the damage they might do to the very consumers they are trying to protect.

Meanwhile, as more Katrina claims are settled, this latest attack on the industry, too, shall pass.