1) Every state also has unique requirements for car insurance.
2) Federal law has in fact controlled many aspects of health insurance plans, particularly employer-sponsored health plans, for decades. The elephant in the room is ERISA, passed 1974, but of course there's also Obamacare.
Federal law has set a minimum for car insurance, I think, might be per state (I think you have to have a minimum of liability). Many states have requirements that exceed the Federal min. They don't contradict it, but require extra, which so far has been held to be fine.
I don't know the full history about why you cant buy health insurance across state lines, but I think it's a blend of different state's regulations and not wanting to be beholden to interstate commerce clause regulations (ironically, the provision that was used to justify the ACA mandatory insured or penalty as a tax ruling.)
I never have nor will understood how the interstate commerce clause was used to justify the ACA "tax". The mandate is effectively compelling intrastate commerce (I know of know interstate medical insurance available) under the guise of regulation interstate commerce. This seems to fly against the letter and intent of the constitution in regards to interstate commerce.
It was not justified via the commerce clause, but rather via congress's taxing powers:
The Affordable Care Act's requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax. Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness.
Friendly reminder that our 10th Amendment rights exist specifically to limit federal power, and to give states superceding power over the federal government. The opposite doesn't actually exist.
Except for Article 1 section 8. If it can be used to prevent a farmer from growing crops to feed his own animals, then it can be used to regulate insurance sales across state lines.
The current is moving in the opposite direction now. Female genital mutilation is now legal in America because federal courts have decided that it's better than abuse of the commerce clause: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/health/fgm-female-genital...
Nice to know that people are still clinging to a document that can literally mean whatever we want it to when convenient while Americans continue to shuffle and get raped by the corporate class.
Congress is actually very limitted in the areas it can supercede stare or local law. The courts and congress, on the other hand, have often decided to ignore those points of the constitution.
> courts and congress, on the other hand, have often decided to ignore those points of the constitution
Saying the Interstate Commerce cases ignore the Constitution is reductive. Many IC-buttresssd laws involve carrots, e.g. highway funds. In other cases, single-state violators are perfectly legal. They just don’t make economy sense in a connection national economy.
States with more people and costs usually have more coverage requirements.
You don’t want insurance to be like banking where banks domicile in “friendly” places like Delaware and South Dakota. Health insurance is awful enough.
Republicans want this so that high cost, low benefit plans can be hocked to less sophisticated people. The more right wing folks also like shared responsibility pools where the members are the insurers, and the organizers take overhead. Obamacare put most of these out of business.
Companies can offer the same plans in different states, but don't. Insurance plans are regionalized because each state has their own regulations and the markets are different. The "across state lines" argument is a red herring. Even if you could use a plan from another state, it isn't like a doctor in New York is going to accept some HMO from Indiana.
No, it's the opposite of that. The act is congress abdicating its power under the commerce clause wrt insurance so that each state can regulate insurance as it sees fit.
I wasn't trying to take a position on what Congress should or shouldn't have done. Just pointing out that it was the Commerce Clause powers that enabled Congress to pass the referenced law.
I find your choice of "abdicate" confusing. There is no Constitutional obligation that Congress act in a particular manner on this issue so that word choice just seems out of place to me. It suggests "not doing something" as opposed to "doing the wrong thing".
I think you are advocating that Congress take affirmative action to enable interstate insurance transactions and to preempt state regulations in this area. That seems reasonable to me.
> it was the Commerce Clause powers that enabled Congress to pass the referenced law
No, I don't think so. The Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to regulate insurance. McCarran-Ferguson is Congress explicitly delegating insurance regulation to the states. Delegating regulation to the states is not a power derived from the Congress clause.
IANAL and I'm not sure exactly what the legal theory underpinning McCarran-Ferguson is. I believe it's probably an implied power.
> that word choice just seems out of place
Maybe abdicate isn't the best word choice, but what I was trying to impart is that when the SCOTUS decided that insurance does indeed fall under the purview of Federal law by way of the Commerce Clause, that Congress had to explicitly say that "Federal law does NOT apply to insurance." That's a sort of abdication to me:
SCOTUS: Hey Congress, it's your job to regulate insurance per the Commerce Clause. That means things like the Sherman Act apply to insurance too.
Congress: Oh, we don't want that. Let's pass McCarran-Ferguson to exempt insurance from Federal law so that the states can regulate it as they see fit.
Every state has unique requirements and Congress has never superseded them with a national health law.