Cite as: 509 U. S. 764 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
fore affirm the Court of Appeals's judgment that it was error for the District Court to dismiss the complaints on grounds of McCarran-Ferguson Act immunity, except as to the one claim for relief that the Court of Appeals correctly found to allege no boycott.
A
By its terms, the antitrust exemption of § 2(b) of the McCarran-Ferguson Act applies to "the business of insurance" to the extent that such business is regulated by state law. While "business" may mean "[a] commercial or industrial establishment or enterprise," Webster's New International Dictionary 362 (2d ed. 1942), the definite article before "business" in § 2(b) shows that the word is not used in that sense, the phrase "the business of insurance" obviously not being meant to refer to a single entity. Rather, "business" as used in § 2(b) is most naturally read to refer to "[m]ercan-tile transactions; buying and selling; [and] traffic." Ibid.
The cases confirm that "the business of insurance" should be read to single out one activity from others, not to distinguish one entity from another. In Group Life & Health Ins. Co. v. Royal Drug Co., 440 U. S. 205 (1979), for example, we held that § 2(b) did not exempt an insurance company from antitrust liability for making an agreement fixing the price of prescription drugs to be sold to Blue Shield policyholders. Such activity, we said, "would be exempt from the antitrust laws if Congress had extended the coverage of the McCarran-Ferguson Act to the 'business of insurance companies.' But that is precisely what Congress did not do." Id., at 233 (footnote omitted); see SEC v. National Securities, Inc., 393 U. S. 453, 459 (1969) (the McCarran-Ferguson Act's "language refers not to the persons or companies who are subject to state regulation, but to laws 'regulating the business of insurance' ") (emphasis in original). And in Union Labor Life Ins. Co. v. Pireno, 458 U. S. 119 (1982), we explicitly framed the question as whether "a particular practice is part of the 'business of insurance' exempted from the anti-
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