A View from the Press Box

I would rarely comment on a fellow NU blogger’s post, being that I have my own soap box from which to pontificate at will. But having gone through a similarly heated debate (pun intended) about global warming on this blog not too long ago, I thought I would throw in my two cents about yesterday’s entry by our tech editor, Ara C. Trembly.

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The long-term care insurance sector made a powerful enemy last week when presidential candidate Barack Obama called for a wide-ranging federal investigation of reported abuses by carriers of elderly claimants. Just what the industry needs–another high-profile Washington probe of alleged insurer wrongdoing!

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You could say Alex Soto was born to be a president. The position is in his genes. Long before he became president of the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America–or of InSource, his Miami-based agency–his great-grandfather was president of Cuba from 1908-12, while his grandfather was elected president in 1936. I mention this because for Mr. Soto–a Havana native–Cuba looms large in his identity as an American success story and as an independent agent.

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Generally, the only coverage of ART in the business sections of mass circulation newspapers or magazines is about whether paintings or sculptures are good investments. Rare, indeed, is coverage of true ART–alternative risk-transfer. So it was a welcome surprise to see a prominent story in “The New York Times” this week about Vermont “becoming” an “‘off-shore’ insurance haven.”

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Industry groups tried to put a positive spin on a grim report yesterday suggesting that insurers no longer deserve a limited exemption from federal antitrust law. With momentum building to pull the rug out from under the McCarran-Ferguson Act, it might be time to start thinking about Plan B. What will insurers do if their precious shield is stripped away? How would they adapt? Who would survive, and who wouldn’t?

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If insurers eventually knuckle under to political and legal pressure to pay flood-related Hurricane Katrina claims that they believe their policies excluded, what happens when they try to recoup some of that money by filing with their reinsurers? One attorney warns that carriers may in fact find themselves out of luck.

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As we celebrate Opening Day, I can’t help but wonder why Congress seems so determined to challenge the insurance industry’s limited federal antitrust exemption, yet appears content to let Major League Baseball restrict competition in our national pastime in far more fundamental and damaging ways.

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Responding to the growing demand for alternatives to the unreliable commercial insurance market, the tiny European nation of Freedonia opened its doors on April 1 to self-insured captives from all over the world.

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