[gwright]

A bit of googling leads to:

> Insurance firms in each state are protected from interstate competition by the federal McCarran-Ferguson Act (1945)

Basically this is Congress using its interstate commerce power, in this case to prohibit certain types of commerce.

[js2]

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.

[gwright]

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.

[js2]

> 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.