McCarran-Ferguson Act

The 1945 federal law leaving insurance regulation to the states.

Overview

It reversed the Supreme Court decision declaring insurance interstate commerce subject to federal antitrust law, exempting the business of insurance from most federal statutes where state law regulates it. The act preserved state rate filing, solvency oversight, and market conduct while keeping federal antitrust enforcement for boycott, coercion, and intimidation. The result is fifty state insurance departments coordinated through the NAIC rather than a federal regulator, unlike banking. Debates over repealing or reforming the act recur, and the ACA insurance provisions overrode it for health coverage. Dodd-Frank later created a Federal Insurance Office that monitors but does not regulate the industry, and national charter proposals have never passed Congress.