Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives on the protection of members of vulnerable religious and ethnic minority communities in Iraq.

I thank my colleague from North Carolina for the time.

Mr. Speaker, I might say this is an interesting point. I don't think I've ever been on the floor in 16 years and have faced this kind of a rule. It is a closed rule. I've been here before with closed rules, but the effect of the closed rule is to prohibit me from providing or from presenting my amendment. Now, that is not unusual. Usually, you come to the floor, and you present an amendment to try and amend the bill to change it from the way it was reported out of the committee that did the work on it. But in this case, I am being prohibited from offering an amendment to change the bill back to the way it was as reported out of the committee on a bipartisan basis.

For whatever reason, the majority on the Rules Committee decided that an amendment that was cited by the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Conyers, as an excellent clarifying amendment is not going to be here.

When one of the chief cosponsors of the bill, or coauthors of the bill, being presented on the floor today announced the bill last week, she said publicly that this was similar to the bill that was passed out of the Judiciary Committee with the bipartisan support of Congressman Lungren from California. So, naturally, I was interested to look at the bill that they were presenting to see how it was the same as the bill we presented. I found out that they'd left out my amendment which allowed for the sharing of historical data by insurers so that they might look at the experience evidence and utilize that in making their decisions with respect to how they conducted their business going forward.

I had been assured that my amendment was not necessary because committee staff on the Judiciary Committee had researched it. Nobody believed that the Justice Department of any administration going forward would find the compiling of historical data among the insurers to be noncompetitive and violative of the antitrust laws. I was further assured that they did not believe that that would be the case with any of the attorneys general of the States.

Now, I had the privilege of serving as attorney general of my State for 8 years, being a member of the National Association of Attorneys General--an organization which does support legislation of this type-- and of course, attorneys general of the various States have independent authority under their State laws to enforce antitrust laws, which I did during my 8 years. Sometimes we went beyond what the Federal Government did because we understood better the unique circumstances of our State.

I remember, one time, we were dealing with a merger between two large banks. They were national banks, and they had branches in the State of California. We were working in conjunction with the antitrust division of the Justice Department, and we were moving in the same direction, but I remember getting a phone call from one of the attorneys at the Justice Department in Washington, DC, who asked this question: Well, how close is San Jose to San Diego? About 400 miles, but they thought they were next to one another.

Why was that relevant? That would be relevant as to whether you had competition among the bank branches that were then going to be merged. Would that then give increased and illegal concentration of power in those areas?

The point I am making is that attorneys general of the States may know a little bit more about their States than attorneys working as hard as they can here in Washington, DC. So the idea that attorneys general are somehow impotent, from a legal standpoint, such that they cannot bring forward antitrust cases, is just not true.

At the same time, I voted for the bill coming out of committee because I thought it had, in fact, reached an appropriate balance. Interestingly enough, the gentlelady from New York, the chairperson of the Rules Committee, stated in her support for this rule and in support for the underlying bill that this is really a tribute to Jack

Brooks, who attempted to do this for years.

I was privileged to serve with Jack Brooks, an interesting Texan Member, someone who was the Chair of the Judiciary Committee for some time. When the bill in the Judiciary Committee was originally introduced this time around, the distinguished chairman of the committee, Mr. Conyers, cited Jack Brooks, and said, This was the Jack Brooks bill. So I went back, and I looked at it. I found out that my amendment, or the language that I had then put in in amendment form, was in the Jack Brooks bill but not in the bill before us. So I brought it forward.

So you might say, if we are doing this in homage to Jack Brooks, you would do him further homage by allowing the language of his bill to be put into this bill, and that's all I ask for. It's all I ask for.

Now, the other part of the bill that came out of the Judiciary Committee, which is not in this bill, is to remove the antitrust exemption that currently exists for medical malpractice insurance providers, but somehow that has been taken out of this bill with no explanation whatsoever.

So we have cherry-picked from the bill that came out of the Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support, and yet we acclaim the bill as being, essentially, the bipartisan bill that came out of committee.

As I said before the Rules Committee yesterday, sometimes you just have to learn to take ``yes'' for an answer. I support the underlying bill. I support this effort. I am trying to make it better. It was accepted on a bipartisan basis. Yet, in the Rules Committee, there wasn't one, in my judgment, credible argument about why you wouldn't have it.

On the one hand, I've heard from the staff of the Judiciary Committee that it is not necessary because no single administration will have a Justice Department that finds this to be anti-competitive. On the other hand, I hear from the chairperson of the committee, Well, we don't want to give this power to the insurance companies. We want the Justice Department to investigate it. Well, if that's the case, you can't have your cake and you can't eat it, too. It's either one or the other.

If it is, as I was told, unnecessary, redundant because nobody looking at it will find this to be noncompetitive because it is essential information--and by the way, the absence of this information will not hurt the big guys as much as it will hurt the little guys. Why? Because if you are a large carrier, you have a far greater experience database than if you are a small carrier. You understand the market better in terms of information that is at your fingertips. If you are a smaller provider, you need the information to understand the universe that you might be attempting to present your product to.

So we have, on the one side, being told that no reasonable antitrust division of any Justice Department of any administration will find this to be anti-competitive. Then you have the chairperson of the Rules Committee saying, No, no, we have to keep this in here because we want to make sure that the Justice Department will be able to determine whether or not it is.

So what does that give the market? What does it give the smaller insurers? It gives them uncertainty.

So the very thing that you are saying you want to do you are prohibiting from being accomplished by not allowing this amendment to be considered. This amendment, as I might say, was described by the chairman of the committee as an excellent clarifying amendment. We are therefore removing clarification, and we are replacing it with uncertainty.

Look, I can go down on the floor and bash the insurance companies as well as anybody here. Let's just knock them all around here. The point is we are making an adjustment in law, which is what is good for the people. So why not do it in an intelligent way, in a way that will actually assist in the marketplace and allow for greater competition? Outside studies have said, if, in fact, this information is not allowed to be collected together and shared among those in the industry, it might--they said ``might''--might have the impact of harming the smaller insurance carriers.

So I don't know why you're doing this. I don't know if there is a political reason for it. I don't know if it's because I happen to be a Republican. I'll give it up. Any Democrat who wants to put his name on it can add his name to Jack Brooks' and present it on the floor. But this kind of silliness on this floor has got to stop. You ask for bipartisanship, and you throw it away. We have complete bipartisanship in the committee, and you ignore it.

As one member of the committee, a Republican member who voted with me in support of this bill on a bipartisan basis, said afterwards when he found out that that bill wasn't going to be presented on the floor, Why do we need committees and subcommittees? What are we holding hearings for? Why are we having the experts testify before us if, in fact, somehow in the--I don't know where it is. There are closed doors somewhere that decided that this bill was going to come out instead of the bill we worked on in committee and then give no good answer.

It's such a shame you don't have TV cameras in the Rules Committee. If people could have seen the argument yesterday, if the public could have understood what we were talking about, I mean they would have shaken their heads and said, Do the people's business. Please do the people's business. Don't get involved in partisanship.

Again, I would say I give up my name on this amendment. I will gladly dedicate it to Jack Brooks in his memory. I'm glad to give it to any Member of the Democratic side. Let's do the people's business and get rid of this silliness of unstated partisanship, without any rationale, that undercuts the impact of the bill.

Once again, this is unique. I've spent 16 years in this place. This is the first time I've ever come to the floor and have been denied an amendment that would put back in something we voted on on a bipartisan basis in committee that has been removed at the direction of somebody, including the Rules Committee, so that we can't have the chance to work on the product that came out of a bipartisan effort in the committee.

Will the gentleman yield?

That's the most interesting thing. You did change it. You changed the bill from the bill that came out of committee. So don't tell me you didn't want it changed. You did change it. That's the whole point we're making.

The bill that we produced out of committee on a bipartisan basis that was called a clarifying amendment was taken out. So you're the folks that changed it. I didn't change it.

My God, is this 1984 doublespeak around this place?

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Could I just ask my friend from California, isn't it true that if there was collusion utilizing this information, that would still be prosecutable under the amendment that I suggest because it is prosecutable at the present time under State action theory and has been pursued by various States?

Well, I know we have had people on this floor who say they have no expertise but they say this amendment does certain things. I did spend 8 years as the Attorney General of California. We had the most active antitrust public law office in the country other than the U.S. Justice Department.

I might just say, this is the first time I have ever heard that Jack Brooks was presenting legislation on the floor of the House or in Judiciary that was to protect insurance companies or allow collusion. The language I used is taken from the Jack Brooks bill. The language I use is specifically the language that was adopted on a bipartisan basis and said by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee was an excellent clarifying amendment.

The fact of the matter is that under the law under this bill, the State action still applies, State action principles still apply. States can still do what they will, including what the gentleman talked about before. So this is a red herring.

This is so silly that you would take something that got bipartisan support, unless you're suddenly suggesting that the chairman of the Judiciary Committee has a secret plan to somehow allow the insurance companies to gouge people and that Jack Brooks had that secret plan. This is total nonsense, to bring a bill to the floor and take out an essential element from committee and then suggest, when you want to put it back in committee for revision, you're trying to protect somebody.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 1098 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I am pleased to yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from North Carolina, Dr. Foxx. All time yielded during consideration of this rule is for debate only.

General Leave

I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous materials into the Record.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, like all of my colleagues, I have spent a lot of time talking with people in my district about health care and what is happening to them. They were in no way prepared for the influx of incredible rate increases that seemed to come out of nowhere and fall like rain upon them, to the extent that most of them really are not sure they can even stay insured.

Invariably, the conversation turns to health premium increases. I hear about insurers that deny coverage. I heard from a father who had just had a child who was born with a condition that would make him uninsurable for the rest of his life. I listened to someone tell me that her husband's new insurance policy won't cover her because she has preexisting conditions or simply because it doesn't cover her.

But now this Congress is on the brink of some commonsense changes to the health insurance industry that will help to level the playing field a bit between ordinary Americans and the giant corporations that exert such power over our day-to-day lives.

And I say ``our'' because I personally am caught in the same trap as most of my constituents. I don't have any kind of special coverage because I'm a Member of Congress. I have always been on my husband's policy at home from Eastman Kodak that has covered us since he retired, but it no longer will cover spouses. We are halfway through dropping spouses, and all the benefits that we got as spouses were taken away about 4 years ago. So it's not the worst plan, but it's not the best either.

Under the health care bill endorsed by House Democrats, the insurance companies will no longer be able to deny insurance coverage based on preexisting conditions or just premiums based on gender, which they do--you may not know that single women are charged 48 percent more for health insurance--or for their occupation.

They wouldn't be able to drop coverage if you get sick. I was talking to a man just this morning who talked about all the money he had paid into health insurance, and when he made his first claim at the age of 30, they decided already he was going to be trouble and denied his claim. They cannot anymore tell you that it costs too much to take care of your child. Insurance companies would have to publicize their rates and no longer can charge older Americans twice as much as the younger ones.

For my money, though, there is one part of our reform package that is simple to explain, easy to justify, and 60 years overdue, and that part is to repeal the antitrust exemption given to the health insurance industry in 1945 by Congress. That is why we are here today. There is no reason any industry in the United States, including baseball, which was exempt as well, should be exempt from the one consumer protection the Federal Government gives everybody against chicanery, collusion, and rate setting.

Even though the broader effort to pass the final health care bill is underway, we have an opportunity today to make a simple, straightforward statement about how we think health insurance should operate in this country. By repealing this unjustifiable exemption, we will enable--this is very important. People do not understand that during the last 60 years the Justice Department has not been able to enforce anything against them because they were exempt. This will enable the Justice Department to begin aggressively enforcing the laws that protect the consumers against the cartel of health insurance who wield such outsized influence in the health care industry.

As it stands now, the insurance industry is allowed to fix prices and engage in other anticompetitive behavior. Because these companies are allowed to pool and share data and to jointly establish premiums and types of coverage, there is very little prospect for an average family to price shop. It is almost too tempting for big insurers not to cheat a little bit. Moreover, regulating the insurance industry is left up to individual States--most of them will tell you that they really are not up to it--which often suffer from a lack of resources to effectively crack down on abuses.

Each of the 50 States and the District of Columbia has its own regulatory framework, traditions, and intentions, which leads to a spotty patchwork of enforcement. In fact, according to a report from the Center for American Progress, there has been only extremely limited and sporadic State enforcement by State insurance commissioners throughout the 60 years. In the void, insurance companies have been free to engage in anticompetitive and anticonsumer behavior, resulting, as we said just recently, in some insurance premiums costing as much as 70 percent.

As a result, this exemption thwarts free market pricing and is impossible to defend today or at any other time. What we will be doing by removing this exemption is to tell the health insurance companies that they need to start behaving like every other industry. We tell them that colluding and conspiring to set prices at a certain level to harm consumers is not going to work in America anymore.

As I said, the history of this provision dates back to 1944, when some insurance companies went to court to challenge the notion that the Federal Government could enforce antitrust laws. Despite their best efforts, the Supreme Court ruled that the insurance business was subject to antitrust laws just like everybody else. Unhappy with that decision, the insurers effectively got Congress to invalidate the ruling of the top court. It was an amazing piece of legislation, Mr. Speaker. Both Houses, Senate and the House, passed legislation giving the insurance industry a 3-year transition period while they moved to be covered by what everybody else is covered by, antitrust. Both bills had passed, and when it came out of conference, the exemption was made permanent.

Over the years, opponents of McCarran-Ferguson--and I have been one of them for about 30--have been stymied. The last serious effort was led by Representative Jack Brooks in 1991, who tried and failed to change the law.

Last year, when we again started in a serious effort to change the law, the industry geared up for a big fight. We heard from the American Insurance Association and the American Academy of Actuaries, among others, who argued that changing this law would somehow cost consumers more money. Other interest groups claimed the provision was poorly written, too broad, or a solution in search of a problem.

Interestingly, some lobbyists have quietly begun to whisper that this provision will not have impact on their rates. They say it is too narrow in scope. Frankly, I would much have preferred to lift this exemption from the entire insurance industry instead of just health. But they are firmly opposed, make no doubt about that, and are lobbying to prevent it, which makes we wonder if they are sort of whistling past the graveyard.

Now, let's look back for a minute at the last major investigation of the health industry. Two years ago, the attorney general for the State of New York, Andrew Cuomo, investigated the collusion of health insurers. Those companies were using Ingenix, a billing data clearinghouse, to set rates even though the company was owned by one of them. The evidence showed the insurers were conspiring together to artificially depress a level of reasonable and customary charges they would reimburse to health care providers, which shifted additional costs onto the policyholder. In the face of a threat from Cuomo, the clearinghouse agreed to disband, and the insurance companies paid a sizable sum to resolve the charges.

As recently as this week, there were fresh news reports out of California about abuses by a major insurer there. It is important to remember that many people assume that conspiring to set rates is illegal in our country. I assume most people believe that. Every high school student in America is taught about the Sherman Antitrust Act and the how the creation of the Federal Trade Commission came about to level the playing field. Part of the motivation was to make sure that small businesses, who make up the backbone of our economy and fuel small towns from coast to coast, would have a chance against the big corporate interests. These creative new entrepreneurs needed to have confidence they would not be frozen out of the market by the big boys. Sadly, that is exactly what happened. In many States and regions across the country, there are often just a couple of health insurance companies operating. In New York, two companies control half the market. Many States have it even worse, including our neighbor Vermont, where two companies have 90 percent of the market share.

Of course, some people will continue to insist that government should just stay out of this whole business. My colleagues on the other side often say no government is the best government and free market works best if there is no attempt to regulate it. But I would argue that any of that is far outweighed by the benefit we gain by having more competition, less concentration, and the assistance of a powerful watchdog.

I strongly encourage all of my colleagues to join me today in supporting the repeal of the McCarran-Ferguson Act.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentlewoman from Maine (Ms. Pingree) control the remainder of my time.

I thank the gentlewoman from New York for yielding time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of the 110th Congress, the new majority came to power full of promises for a bipartisan working relationship and a landmark pledge to create the ``most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history''; however, this rule and this bill are the antithesis of that statement.

The bill we consider today, H.R. 4626, the Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act, is not the language that passed the House Judiciary Committee in November of 2009 as H.R. 3596.

In fact, the bill we have before us today was not considered by any committee and was introduced only 2 days ago, on Monday, February 22, 2010.

It is hard to understand what is the sudden rush. Yesterday, the gentlewoman from New York said we have waited 60 years to get this bill; today, she says this is long overdue. But she doesn't point out that in all that period of time, the Democrats have been in charge of Congress except for 2 years in the fifties during the Eisenhower administration and the years 1995 to 2006. So why didn't they get it passed when they were in control before? Why have they been waiting 60 years to get it done?

The language in H.R. 4626 is substantially different from the bill the Judiciary Committee passed. That bill dealt with both health insurance and medical liability insurance, but medical liability insurance has since been stricken from the language. In addition, my colleague, Mr. Lungren from California, offered an amendment that was accepted with bipartisan support by the House Judiciary Committee during markup. That amendment was stricken from the language of the current bill that we see in H.R. 4626. During the Rules Committee debate yesterday, Mr. Lungren offered that same amendment; however, it was not made in order. Instead, we have yet another closed rule where Members are shut out from offering any amendments to a bill that did not see the proper vetting process. It is high time that we open this process up and that we hold the majority to their promise to make this an open Congress and allow amendments to be offered on the floor and fully debated.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield such time as he may consume to my distinguished colleague from California, the former attorney general of California, Mr. Daniel E. Lungren.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished ranking member of the Rules Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier).

(Mr. DREIER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The debate that we've been having on this rule has brought up issues that we have been bringing up this entire session. Two major questions: No. 1, where are the jobs?--we keep asking that question--and, No. 2, what is the other side afraid of?

As Mr. Lungren pointed out, the bill that passed the committee passed with a bipartisan vote. People were very happy with it. They were very happy with his amendment.

And yet somewhere between that committee and here, the bill was changed substantially. We assume it was changed in the Speaker's office. But we don't understand what our colleagues are afraid of. Why are they afraid of debating this amendment? They can't even allow debate on something that they don't want in a bill.

And yet that's what the American people want from us. They are sick and tired of things being done behind closed doors. They want to see us debating things. They know we're going to have disagreements occasionally on philosophy, and that's fine. That's what this country's about. But people should be able to see the debate, instead of one or two people in this House making all the decisions for the 435 Members of the House.

Let me say a word also about, again, the underlying bill that this rule is dealing with. The bill is not going to accomplish what our colleagues across the aisle are saying. They're saying it's going to bring down the cost of health insurance and add more competition to the marketplace. In fact, the bill will probably do just the opposite.

Let me say what the Congressional Budget Office said when they reviewed H.R. 3596. They said, the bill could ``affect the costs of and premiums charged by private health insurance companies; whether premiums would increase or decrease as a result is difficult to determine, but in either case the magnitude of the effects is likely to be quite small. That effect is likely to be small because State laws already bar the activities that would be prohibited under Federal law if this bill was enacted.''

However, with the new language in the underlying bill and no CBO score, there's no telling what the effect will be.

And the reason we don't have a CBO score is because the bill was introduced, as I said, 2 days ago and brought directly to the floor under a closed rule. This is a pattern of the ruling party here. And ``ruling party'' is really the appropriate term, because that's how they act; that's how the party acts, as a ruling party.

We see this same thing happening with the new health care proposal from President Obama. Here we have from him what's basically a 10-page proposal which melds elements of the House and Senate-passed health care bills, along with a few new provisions. But both of those bills were written behind closed doors, no committee involvement, or very little committee involvement; none in the Senate, some in the House; but basically the bills written in the Speaker's office and in the Majority Leader's office.

However, the White House hasn't revealed any legislative text, and no CBO score is available. We can't pass a proposal in here. We must have exact legislative language.

Let me mention again the CBO and its reaction to the proposal put forth by President Obama. An article in the Washington Times entitled CBO: Obama Health Bill Too Sketchy published yesterday states:

``The administration did not post the bill's text on the White House Web site, but outlined what the legislation would do. It said the measure would cost $950 billion over 10 years.'' That's fine for the White House to say that, but we don't know that's what it's going to cost.

``The information wasn't enough for the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the official keeper of budget costs, to even venture an estimate of the bill's price tag.

`` `Although the proposal reflects many elements that were included in the health care bills passed by the House and Senate last year, it modifies many of those elements and also includes new ones,' CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf said in a blog post.''

The CBO goes on, ``Preparing a cost estimate requires very detailed specifications of numerous provisions. The materials that were released this morning do not provide sufficient detail on all of the provisions.'' So we don't have the information that we need in the Obama health care proposal either. This is the way this administration and this Democrat-controlled Congress is doing things.

I now would like to yield 3 minutes to my colleague from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte).

(Mr. GOODLATTE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve my time.

I yield 30 seconds to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Scott just made Mr. Lungren's case for him as far as I'm concerned. He just said we want to work together on issues. Mr. Lungren said that's what we've done. A bipartisan amendment passed. The Democrats took the bipartisan amendment out of the bill.

We want to work together. Many Republicans are going to vote for this bill. I hope they won't vote for the rule, because it's a bad rule, but they will vote for the bill.

The Democrats, time and again, tout their plan will increase competition and lower premiums. We don't think that's true.

I want to urge the American people to read the summary the White House has put out on their bill and see the increased Federal control of health care in this country.

The gentlewoman from Maine did not yield time to me so that I could explain that I did not urge opposition to the underlying bill but only the rule.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Castor).

Thank you to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lungren). I will not give you all of the answers I am sure you are looking for, and I feel confident that, when this bill is debated on the floor, there will be many more questions raised from the members of the committee who sat through this debate.

I can only say, as a member of the Rules Committee, I, too, sat there while this conversation was going on. I am not an expert in this particular area. I am very pleased, and I want to talk a little bit about how pleased I am that we are taking on this exemption of the insurance companies.

I did hear people say, and the reason that I voted the way I did yesterday, is that I heard that the Lungren safe harbor amendment was a loophole in the McCarran repeal. I heard that consumer groups had said that this was anti-consumer. A safe harbor isn't needed because the bill does not prohibit information sharing. On the other hand, putting in a safe harbor statute would automatically immunize the insurance companies, and it would not permit a case-by-case review of companies that go too far.

Honestly, I am not in a position to argue this amendment, but I know it will be discussed when the bill is discussed.

I want to go back to the original issue, because that is why I am standing here today.

Mr. Speaker, I am a proud cosponsor of H.R. 4626, the Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act.

I have seen firsthand how health insurance companies have used their exemption from antitrust regulation to profit off the backs of hardworking individuals and small business owners in my home State of Maine. If you want to buy an individual insurance policy in my State, it doesn't seem like you have much choice. Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maine became so big and swallowed up so much of the market that, at one point, nearly 8 out of 10 people buying an individual policy ended up with them as their insurance provider.

How did Anthem reward them? With skyrocketing rate increases that are impossible to keep up with.

In Maine, Anthem's rates have gone up 250 percent in the last decade--10 times the rate of inflation. Last year,

they asked for a 19 percent rate increase. People in Maine were shocked. Anthem, apparently, was just getting started. This year, Anthem is demanding a 23 percent increase in their rates.

Mr. Speaker, the only thing rising as fast as the premiums big insurance companies charge is their profit margin. Last year, profits for the five biggest insurance companies rose by 56 percent over the year before. I don't know about you, but I don't know anyone else in this economy who got a 56 percent rate increase last year or a raise.

Anthem has turned a deaf ear to the concerns of Mainers who are struggling to pay premiums. Last year, when they asked for a 19 percent increase, our insurance superintendent, Mila Kofman, denied the request, allowing them 11 percent instead, which seemed reasonable. So what did Anthem do? They immediately turned around and sued the State of Maine. As our attorney general, Janet Mill, said, ``In this economy, it's hard to believe the greed of it.''

Also last year, I learned that Anthem had suddenly and quietly changed a policy that allowed them to deny claims at our State's VA hospital. The VA staff caught the switch, but very quickly, the hospital was out $500,000. You might ask yourself, How can a company get away with that? How can a company get away with denying claims for veterans and with demanding outrageous rate increases while pocketing record profits?

The answer is pretty simple. They don't have any real competition.

I say enough is enough, Mr. Speaker. Anthem clearly demonstrated that their monopoly on the individual insurance market in Maine leaves consumers with little choice but to either pay escalating premiums or to go without coverage. You will hear this more than once today, and we already did from the Chair. Unbelievably, health insurance companies and Major League Baseball are the only two entities exempt from antitrust laws, and it is high time we gave the insurance companies a little competition.

I know it's not what Anthem wants. It is why they have lobbied so hard against health care reform that would lower health care costs overall. It's what the American people want. The American people believe in fair play, a level playing field, and in free and open competition, not a system where one massive corporation can run roughshod over consumers.

We need to put families before insurance companies and people before profits. H.R. 4626 is an essential step in achieving meaningful health reform and in giving Americans choice. I urge my colleagues to join me in voting ``yes'' on this rule, this unamended rule, and ``yes'' on the underlying bill.

I reserve the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.

Well, thank you very much. I didn't even have to ask and I appreciate your offering.

Thank you.

I knew you wanted to hear my very brief answer on this, and I just want to clarify. I appreciate your desire to discuss the process, and I hope you take as much time as you choose to do so. But I just want to clarify----

And I will just be brief. I want to have plenty of time for my colleagues who want to talk more about the substance of this issue. But I would say, I felt there was plenty of time for the process in the Rules Committee. There was a lively conversation with some of my colleagues and your colleagues, bipartisan, back and forth. But I disagreed. I did not think that we needed to change this exemption about data in the rule, in this particular amendment. I am happy to allow the Justice Department to have a decision about this later.

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the clarification on the issue of a change.

I will just clarify my own remarks, that I agreed with the sentiment that came out in this final rule that we did not need to make this exemption for the data.

I would like to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi).

I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague on the other side of the aisle.

We've heard a variety of reasons and excuses today about why this bill shouldn't pass, whether it was about the committee process or a loophole, debating it back and forth. But the fact is we cannot have meaningful health care reform in this country until we finally decide to put an end to insurance company greed and insurance company monopolies. We must stop companies like Anthem who demand rate increases that are many times the rate of inflation, which puts health care insurance out of reach for many, many Americans.

I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question and on the rule.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I move the previous question on the resolution.

The previous question was ordered.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 944--``Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives on religious minorities in Iraq.'' As a cosponsor of this resolution, I join my colleagues in expressing my concern about the plight of vulnerable religious and ethnic minorities of Iraq, and we are particularly concerned for the Chaldeans, Syriacs, Assyrians, and other Christians, Sabean Mandeans, Yazidis, Baha'is, Jews, and Muslim ethnic minorities, the Shabak and Turkomen, and other religious and ethnic minorities of Iraq.

Political and religious freedom in Iraq is a vital concern with regards to the nation and region. When we envision the long-term peace and security of Iraq, we envision a country with a strong, functioning democracy that respects the rights of all citizens. That vision is not a product of the imperialism of Western ideas; the tradition of religious plurality has roots in the history and religious beliefs of the Iraqi people. But, although Iraq has a strong history of multiculturalism, it must not rest on this reputation. The rights of minorities in Iraq are not fully protected, and the Iraqi government can and must do more to protect the rights of its minorities.

The degree to which Iraq protects those rights is a reflection on our country. Because of the United States' unfortunate detour from our struggle against terrorism into Iraq, the actions of the new government of Iraq directly reflect upon us. So far, I believe that the actions of the government of Iraq with respect to political and religious freedoms are problematic.

In no case is the Iraqi government's treatment of minorities more troubling than their treatment of the residents of Camp Ashraf. Although Camp Ashraf is halfway around the world, the conditions there affect Americans, including in my own district and throughout the state of Texas where some of my constituents have family members in Camp Ashraf. For example, my constituent, Mitra Sohrabi, has a brother who is currently detained in Camp Ashraf, and worries about his health on a daily

basis. I also know many people in Houston and throughout the state of Texas who were affected directly by the July 2009 raid on Camp Ashraf.

Late last year, three months after U.S. forces turned over control of Camp Ashraf, Iraqi Security Forces violated the human rights of the People's Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI). Camp Ashraf detains over 3,400 exiled Iranian political dissidents, who are members of the PMOI, including over 1,000 women. The PMOI opposes the current Iranian regime, and for their political beliefs they have been exiled from Iran and sequestered in Camp Ashraf. Several women detained at Camp Ashraf have reported acts of intimidation and threats of physical and sexual violence by members of the Iraqi security forces.

On July 28, 2009, Iraqi Security Forces conducted a raid on the detainees at Camp Ashraf. The raid occurred fewer than three months after the U.S. passed control of Camp Ashraf to the government of Iraq. The raid began on Tuesday, July 28th when Iraqi armored vehicles began attacks against the Iranian prisoners. The attacks continued for two full days and resulted in the death of 11 exiles and the injury of over 400 more. As a result of the raid on Camp Ashraf, 36 men were arrested under allegations of violent behavior. The 36 arrested Camp Ashraf residents have since been freed, but the United States has a continuing interest in ensuring that the events of July 28th never occur again.

Although most of the residents of Camp Ashraf were not religious minorities, the Iraqi government's treatment of the camp's residents sets a dangerous example. In recent years, there have been alarming numbers of religiously motivated killings, abductions, beatings, rapes, threats, intimidation, forced conversions, marriages, and displacement from homes and businesses, and attacks on religious leaders, pilgrims, and holy sites, in Iraq, with the smallest religious minorities in Iraq having been among the most vulnerable, although Iraqis from many religious communities, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, have suffered in this violence. In summary, members of small religious minority communities in Iraq do not have militia or tribal structures to defend them, do not receive adequate official protection, and are legally, politically, and economically marginalized.

This resolution will remind the Iraqi government that minorities of any type--be it race, religion, political affiliation, or difference of thought--are integral components of a robust civil society and a true democracy. I have faith that Iraq can and will achieve such a democracy, but we must remember that building democracy requires more than a constitution--it requires a commitment to democratic principles.