Sixty-five percent (65%) of voters nationwide say laws should be changed so that health insurance companies are subject to anti-trust regulations. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 12% disagree, while 23% are not sure.

Anti-trust laws are intended to prevent companies and other business entities from working together in ways that limit competition.

Support for putting the health insurance companies under the anti-trust umbrella is consistent with another survey finding: 66% say free market competition between insurance companies will do more than government regulation to reduce health care costs. Just 23% believe more government regulation is the way to reduce costs, and 10% are not sure.

Seventy-three percent (73%) also favor another measure designed to spur free-market competition by allowing people buy health insurance across state lines. Just 20% are opposed to that measure.

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Voters continue to believe health care reform is needed, but they also remain skeptical about the proposals working their way through Congress. Fifty-four percent (54%) say major changes are needed in the health care system, but just 42% support the approach proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats.

Eighty-six percent (86%) of Republicans and 73% of unaffiliated voters believe that free market competition will do more than government regulation to reduce health care costs. Democrats are evenly divided.

Democrats, however, favor making insurance companies subject to anti-trust laws by a seven-to-one margin. Sixty-four percent (64%) of unaffiliated voters and 58% of Republicans share that view.

The insurance industry was exempted from antitrust laws by Congress in 1945 after the Supreme Court ruled that the industry should be regulated by the government. State agencies have been the primary regulators of the industry.

Earlier polling has shown that people like the idea of a "public option" when it is presented as a way to increase competition. However, the creation of a government-run health insurance company to comepte with private insurers is strongly opposed if it is seen as encouraging private companies to drop coverage for their employees and shift them to a public plan.

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