Insurance Law Commons^™

Family Security Insurance: A New Foundation For Economic Security, Workplace Flexibility 2010, Georgetown University Law Center, Berkeley Center On Health, Economic & Family Security, Uc Berkeley School Of Law

Published Reports

A report released by Georgetown Law's Workplace Flexibility 2010 and the Berkeley Center on Health, Economic & Family Security (Berkeley CHEFS) outlining a blueprint for establishing and financing a new national insurance program to provide wage replacement for time off for health and caregiving needs. The report describes the need among working Americans for time off from work to address personal illness, to care for a new child, or to care for a loved one with a serious illness. It argues that the need for time off is no longer an issue for individual families or select industries, but a …

American Law: Integrating Ultra-Traditional Muslims Through Accommodations, Mohamed A. Elsanousi

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Appropriate legal accommodations for religious minorities can support their integration into American society. Historically, the teachings and practices of many religious communities that have otherwise conflicted with state or federal law have been successfully preserved through legal accommodations. A brief comparison with the experiences of such groups as the Hasidic Jewish community will provide a context for religiously based legal accommodations for various religious communities within the United States.

This dissertation examines the particular situation of a Tablighi Jamaat community, a Muslim missionary movement, as a means to explore how legal accommodations facilitate the successful, stable integration of such groups. …

Insurance, Stephen L. Cotter, Stephen M. Schatz, Bradley S. Wolff

Mercer Law Review

This survey year, from June 1, 2009 to May 31, 2010, brought significant developments to a broad array of insurance fields. Both the Georgia Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that a cancellation notice for nonpayment of a premium can also contain an offer to reinstate upon payment in the "grace" period. The supreme court has strictly enforced basic concepts of "offer and acceptance" in the context of time-limit policy demands containing less than complete release and indemnity terms, thereby appearing to put insurers in "catch 22" situations with their insureds. A …

Erisa & Uncertainty, Brendan S. Maher, Peter K. Stris

Faculty Scholarship

In the United States, retirement income and health insurance are largely provided through private promises made incident to employment. These “benefit promises” are governed by a statute called ERISA, which many healthcare and pension scholars argue is the cause of fundamental problems with our nation’s health and retirement policy. Inevitably, however, they advance narrowly tailored proposals to amend the statute. This occurs because of the widely-held view that reform should leave undisturbed the underlying core of the statute. This Article develops a theory of ERISA designed to illustrate the unavoidable need for structural reform.

Reauthorizing Schip: Only A Starting Point, Pamela Newell

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

Misclassifying The Insurance Policy: The Unforced Errors Of Unilateral Contract Characterization, Hazel Beh, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Potential Insurance Coverage Implications, Lynn K. Neuner, W. Nicholson Price

Articles

More than 300 lawsuits have already been filed in Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama against BP and other corporations involved in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, including Transocean, Halliburton, and Cameron, with thousands more anticipated. This article briefly addresses the contours of the coverage lawsuit already filed against BP and other coverage disputes we may see in the future.

Equally Insured? Lasting Insurance Industry Reform Came Only With A Rethinking Of Race, Mary L. Heen

Law Faculty Publications

Earlier this decade, some of America’s best-known life insurance companies quietly settled multimillion-dollar civil rights lawsuits challenging race-based life insurance rates and benefits. As a result, those companies closed a chapter of American economic history that began after the Civil War with the door-to-door marketing of small individual life insurance policies to poor workers, including former slaves, and their families. The closing of this chapter in history also marked the end of a form of Jim Crow race discrimination largely invisible to the American public.

Rethinking Trust Law Reform: How Prudent Is Modern Prudent Investor Doctrine?, Stewart E. Sterk

Articles

During the 1990s, modern portfolio theory provided the theoretical foundation for significant reforms in trust investment doctrine-reforms that freed trustees from a legal regime in which they faced potential liability for making "speculative" investments. The reforms enabled trustees to pursue investment policies that protected beneficiaries against inflation risk. But the reforms worked too well; they encouraged trustees to invest a higher percentage of trust assets in equities just in time for a decade that has seen two precipitous stock market declines. Although no sensible investment strategy would have avoided losses during these periods of market turmoil, the doctrinal reforms endorsed …

Crisis On Campus: Student Access To Health Care, Bryan A. Liang

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

College-aged adults are an overrepresented group in the uninsured population of the United States, and traditionally underserved minorities are disproportionately affected. Students with private health insurance are often functionally uninsured as well, since most schools refuse to accept this traditionally elite calling card on campus. Consequently, the large uninsured and functionally uninsured populations often rely on school-sponsored health insurance plans for access to care. These plans have uneven coverage, limited benefits, exclusions and high co-pays and deductibles, and provide little health care security for their beneficiaries. Further, schools and insurance companies have profited substantially from these student plans, raising the …

The “Licentiousness” In Religious Organizations And Why It Is Not Protected Under Religious Liberty Constitutional Provisions, Marci A. Hamilton

Articles

No abstract provided.

Reconstructing The Individual Mandate As An Escrow Account, Gregg D. Polsky

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The recent health care reform law's most controversial provision is the individual mandate, which imposes a fine on individuals who fail to obtain a minimum level of health insurance coverage. Many object to this policy, arguing that the government shouldn't force individuals to purchase health insurance. Others believe that the mandate is a necessary component to health care reform. What has been missed in the discussion is that Congress could restructure the individual mandate to avoid the requirement that individuals purchase health insurance while still fulfilling its principal function. The principal purpose of the mandate is not to require individuals …

Symbiotic Reform To Regulate The Insurance Industry: Regulators, Market Access, And Antitrust Issues In The U.S. And Korea, Sung Keun Chun

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation deals with different issues together: regulators, market access, and antitrust in the insurance industry in the U.S. and Korea. The insurance market is regulated by the state alone and more than 51 requirements exist to establish an insurance company in the U.S. The insurance industry is also statutorily exempted from federal antitrust laws in certain conditions under the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which is facing proposals to reveal or revise it from Congress. The appropriate licensing policy is important because it can contribute highly to social welfare and protect the market failure. The proper application of antitrust law with a …

The Insurance Policy As Social Instrument And Social Institution, Jeffrey W. Stempel

William & Mary Law Review

This Article suggests that insurance policies are not merely contracts but also are designed to perform particular risk management, deterrence, and compensation functions important to economic and social ordering. Recognizing this fact has significant implications regarding the manner in which insurance policies are construed in coverage disputes. From this insight flow interpretative consequences suggesting that policy construction can be improved by not only performing traditional contract analysis of disputed policies but also appreciating the particular function of the insurance policy in question as part of the insurance product’s larger role as a social and economic instrument or institution. Applying this …

Failure To Allocate? Nobody Pays: Using Miller Shugart Settlements In Cases Of Questionable Insurance Coverage, Jerome Abrams

Journal of Law and Practice

No abstract provided.

The Legal & Business Aspects Of Career-Ending Disability Insurance Policies In Professional And College Sports, Glenn M. Wong, Chris Deubert

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

Are You Covered? The Need For Improvement In Insurance Coverage For Autism Spectrum Disorder, 44 J. Marshall L. Rev. 291 (2010), Marissa Mazza

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Form & Reform: The Economic Realities Of The United States Healthcare System, Mark Votruba

Journal of Law and Health

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Eric Steiger, I'm one of the editors-in-chief from the Journal of Law and Health. And I'm happy to welcome all of you to the second speaker event in the 2009/2010 Journal of Law and Health Speaker Series. Thank you all for coming. Now, I know that the news last week was dominated by the story of Sandra Bullock's breakup; however, some of you might have noticed that a small piece of minor legislation also got passed through Congress last week. And you also might have noticed that it wasn't quite as full of bipartisan …

Following The Money – The Chaotic Kerfuffle Over Residential Insurance Proceeds That Simultaneously Are The Only Rebuild Funds And The Only Mortgage Collateral, Kenneth S. Klein

Faculty Scholarship

In an average year in the United States, 30,000 homes are lost to fire, flood, or another similar disaster. In 2003, one of those homes was mine. Since that time, I have spent literally thousands of hours counseling hundreds of survivors of other disasters (including wildfires, Hurricane Katrina, and the crash of a military jet into a residential neighborhood) on the unique set of emotional, financial, and legal challenges that define their road to recovery. One of the recurring and yet repetitively unanticipated challenges is the tug of war between homeowners and their mortgage lender/mortgage servicer over money. That challenge …

The Parity Cure: Solving Unequal Treatment Of Mental Illness Health Insurance Through Federal Legislation, Christopher J. Churchill

Georgia Law Review

American health care reform has drawn both impassioned critics and vociferous supporters. Although underinsured and uninsured Americans face a dire plight, the mentally ill-even those with private health insurance-confront even greater hurdles. While drawing substantially less outcry, many insurance plans place limits on mental illness coverage that do not apply to physical illnesses. Though Congress recently passed the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (the MHPAEA), it did not solve the problem. The MHPAEA eliminates some disparity-such as higher deductibles for mental health treatment-but still allows insurers to impose unequal annual coverage limits. Furthermore,the MHPAEA shares the …

Desperate Doctors And Antitrust Laws: The Best Ways For Lawmakers To Simulate Physician Collective Bargaining, Cristina Olson

Nevada Law Journal

This Note will examine the legality of bills that open up physician collective bargaining—and what kind of provisions lawmakers should include to ensure legality and good policy. Given the current economic downturn, states must look for ways to make health insurance more affordable; a low-cost adjustment of collective bargaining rules may be a good solution. Such an adjustment would not be the only, or necessarily the best, solution to the healthcare cost crisis that exists in America, but it would be worthwhile for legislators to consider. Furthermore, if lawmakers craft legislation that puts state governments in charge of actively supervising …

Much Ado About Possibly Pretty Little: Mccarran-Ferguson Repeal In The Health Care Reform Effort, Christopher L. Sagers

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Since 1945, the McCarran-Ferguson Act (MFA) has shielded the “business of insurance” from antitrust liability, so long as the challenged conduct is “regulated by State Law” and does not constitute “boycott, coercion, or intimidation.” This law, like the dozens of other statutory antitrust exemptions that still exist for other industries, has more or less always been controversial, and efforts to repeal it date back more than thirty years. This Essay asks two questions: (1) what consequences the pending repeal measures might have if one of them becomes law; and (2) what a close examination of this effort might teach us …

The Mccarran-Ferguson Act's Intersection With Foreign Insurance Companies, Angela D. Krupar

Cleveland State Law Review

This Note is designed to answer a simple question: must insurance companies incorporated in foreign countries follow the same rules as their competitors incorporated in this country? More specifically, it addresses whether the McCarran-Ferguson Act should reach foreign insurance companies and foreign commerce.

A Short History Of Tontines, Kent Mckeever

Faculty Scholarship

A tontine is an investment scheme through which shareholders derive some form of profit or benefit while they are living, but the value of each share devolves to the other participants and not the shareholder's heirs on the death of each shareholder. The tontine is usually brought to an end through a dissolution and distribution of assets to the living shareholders when the number of shareholders reaches an agreed small number.

If people know about tontines at all, they tend to visualize the most extreme form – a joint investment whose heritable ownership ends up with the last living shareholder. …

On The Constitutionality Of Health Care Reform, Barak D. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

This commentary describes the legal challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Consent To Settle? A New Twist In The Tri-Partite Relationship, David F. Tavella

Barry Law Review

This article discusses the tri-partite relationship in litigation between insurers, the insured, and retained counsel. This article further discusses the complications for plaintiffs who wish to settle a case with defense counsel retained by the insurance carrier, and the ethical considerations that may arise under the Model Rules of Professional conduct when settlement is at the direction of the insurance carrier.

Readability, Contracts Of Recurring Use, And The Problem Of Ex Post Judicial Governance Of Health Insurance Polices, John Aloysius Cogan, Jr.

Faculty Articles and Papers

While the rhetoric surrounding the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act focused on core issues such as cost, quality, and access to care, the dialog rarely acknowledged a key problem-the fact that most Americans do not understand their health insurance. Simply put, consumers do not fully grasp their health insurance coverage because the jargon found in many health insurance contracts is impenetrable to most Americans. This is disconcerting because consumer-oriented information is central to our increasingly consumer-directed health care system. Consumers are expected to make cost-effective choices among the array of health insurance plans that may be …

The Language Of Lives, Jill Anderson

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Tontines For The Invincibles: Enticing Low Risks Into The Health-Insurance Pool With An Idea From Insurance History And Behavioral Economics, Peter Siegelman, Tom Baker

Faculty Articles and Papers

Over one-third of the uninsured adults in the U.S. below retirement age are between nineteen and twenty-nine years old. Young adults, especially men, often go without insurance, even when buying it is mandatory and sometimes even when it is a low-cost employment benefit. This Article proposes a new form of health insurance targeted at this group, the "young invincibles"-those who (wrongly) believe that they do not need health insurance because they will not get sick. Our proposal offers a cash bonus to those who turn out to be right in their belief that they did not really need health insurance. …

Annuity Coeptis: Is There A Way To Avoid American Equity Investment Life Insurance Co. V. Sec Becoming A Herald For The Sec Gaining Regulatory Control Over All Securities-Related Insurance Products?, Russell Hasan

Connecticut Insurance Law Journal

No abstract provided.