Insurance Law Commons^™

Harvey, Irma, And The Nfip: Did The 2017 Hurricane Season Matter To Flood Insurance Reauthorization?, Robin Kundis Craig

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has become a coastal hurricane insurance program—a fact that is bankrupting it. As a result of climate change, the ocean surrounding the United States is both rising and becoming warmer, and hurricanes and other coastal storms are projected to become both more frequent and more destructive. While no particular hurricane can yet be blamed exclusively on climate change, these projections nevertheless have real implications for the future of the NFIP.

In 2017, Congress was gearing up to reauthorize the NFIP just as the United States entered its worst hurricane season in over a decade. …

Does Small Group Health Insurance Deliver Group Benefits: An Argument In Favor Of Allowing The Small Group Market To Die, John Aloysius Cogan, Jr.

Faculty Articles and Papers

The small group health insurance market is failing. Today, fewer than one-third of small firms now offer health insurance and the number of people covered by small group insurance continues to drop. These problems invite the obvious question: What should be done about the small group market? Past scholarship on the small group market has largely focused on documenting the market's problems, evaluating the effectiveness of prior reform efforts, and proposing regulatory changes to stabilize the market. This Article takes a different approach to the small group problem by asking a previously unasked question: Does the small group market deliver …

Insurance Law, J. Price Collins, John C. Scott, Blake H. Crawford

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

Playing With Fire? Testing Moral Hazard In Homeowners Insurance Valued Policies, Peter Molk

UF Law Faculty Publications

Insurance policy design and regulation continually grapples with moral hazard concerns. Yet these concerns rest largely on theory-based assumptions about how rational economic actors will respond to financial incentives. Advances in behavioral economics call these assumptions into question. This Article conducts an empirical test of moral hazard in homeowners insurance markets. Eighteen states’ “valued policy” laws require more generous compensation by insurers for certain total house losses. I test the moral hazard prediction that fire rates will consequently be higher in these states than in others. Using a private insurance database on the cause of loss for over four million …

The Promises And Pitfalls Of Harmonization: What Insurance Guarantee Schemes Tell Us About When Harmonization Works, Jordan Burton

Indiana Law Journal

In Part I, this Note considers the mechanisms of harmonization and the regulatory and fairness policy concerns that harmonization is designed to address. Part II explores some of the problems harmonization can create, with an eye toward how those problems manifest in the IGS context. Finally, Part III discusses how IGS address an urgent and inevitable problem that affects actors in the insurance market at every level. By analyzing comments on the Commission’s White Paper, Part III proposes that these three factors—convergence of stakeholder interest, inevitability, and urgency— are key to understanding when member states, EU citizens, and industry actors …

Regulation By Catastrophe Insurance: A Comparative Study, Qihao He, Michael Faure

Connecticut Insurance Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Legal Winners And Losers In The Mortgage Crisis, Shaun P. Martin

Connecticut Insurance Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Bringing Counsel In From The Cold: Reconciling Ethical Rules With The Quagmire Of Insurance Defense Practice, Joseph Regalia, V. Andrew Cass

Scholarly Works

Our case study is an ethical dilemma faced by insurance defense attorneys daily. An attorney is hired by Insurance Company A to defend an insured who is in a lawsuit over a car accident. Insurance Company A is one of the attorney's best clients, from whom he receives a steady stream of cases. Our attorney's investigation reveals good news-another driver not yet a party to the lawsuit may have contributed to the accident. This revelation has the potential to shift the blame, and all or part of the financial responsibility, onto the shoulders of the new potential party and his …

The Techno-Neutrality Solution To Navigating Insurance Coverage For Cyber Losses, Jeffrey W. Stempel, Erik S. Knutsen

Scholarly Works

Insurers currently constrict coverage for losses involving electronic information in traditional insurance product lines. As a result, insurance customers are driven to the brave new world of non-standardized varieties of cyber-risk insurance policies. That world abounds with coverage gaps as the market for cyber insurance sorts itself out. Until that synchronization of coverage for cyber losses occurs, litigation is bound to occur as the boundaries of coverage remain patchwork and uncertain.

This article examines the degree to which cyber losses differ from other insured losses. The cyber-loss insurance coverage jurisprudence reveals a mishmash of principles and coverage terms that are …

Rhode Island's Voluntary Restructuring Of Solvent Insurers Law And Similar Efforts In Other States, Matthew Gendron, Esq.

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

2017 Survey Of Rhode Island Law: Cases And Public Laws Of Note

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Remarks On Patient Privacy: Problems, Perspectives, And Opportunities, Stacey A. Tovino

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Regulatory Fracture Plugging: Managing Risks To Water From Shale Development, Caroline Cecot

Texas A&M Law Review

Debates about the desirability of widespread shale development have highlighted outstanding uncertainty about its health, safety, and environmental impacts—most prominently, its water-contamination risks—and the ability of current institutions to deal with these impacts. States, the primary regulators of oil and gas extraction, face pressure from the energy industry, local communities, and, in some cases, the federal government to strike the right balance between energy production and the health and safety of individuals and the environment—an elusive balance given the ongoing risk uncertainty. This dynamic is not especially unique to fracking, or even oil and gas extraction; instead, this dynamic, characterized …

Proposing A Federal Post-Natural Disaster Mediation Program, Michelle Shaykevich

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Section II explores the history of state and federal natural disaster mediation programs. Currently, there are three primary disaster mediation processes used by states. First, and most common, are ad-hoc programs. These programs are developed after a natural disaster has occured. Second is a program utilized exclusively by North Carolina, whereby an institutional organization maintains a "state of readiness" in the event of a declared disaster. The third type is a mediation program that is run by the state but specifically excludes the mediation of flood insurance claims. Regarding federal post-natural disaster mediation programs, Section II discusses current legislative and …

Modernizing Disability Income For Cancer Survivors, Ann C. Hodges

Law Faculty Publications

The medical progress in cancer treatment is worthy of celebration, as survivors of many cancers are living longer. This good news, however, comes with challenges for those survivors. Empirical evidence from researchers at cancer centers demonstrates the devastating impact that cancer has on employment, resulting in serious financial stress for survivors and their families. My previous research used this empirical data to recommend changes in employment laws to meet the need of survivors to maintain employment. This article builds on the prior research by using the empirical evidence of the employment effects of cancer to recommend changes in the disability …

Insurance Coverage Policies For Pharmacogenomic And Multi-Gene Testing For Cancer, Ellen Wright Clayton, Christine Y. Lu, Stephanie Loomer, Et Al.

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Abstract: Insurance coverage policies are a major determinant of patient access to genomic tests. The objective of this study was to examine differences in coverage policies for guideline-recommended pharmacogenomic tests that inform cancer treatment. We analyzed coverage policies from eight Medicare contractors and 10 private payers for 23 biomarkers (e.g., HER2 and EGFR) and multi-gene tests. We extracted policy coverage and criteria, prior authorization requirements, and an evidence basis for coverage. We reviewed professional society guidelines and their recommendations for use of pharmacogenomic tests. Coverage for KRAS, EGFR, and BRAF tests were common across Medicare contractors and private payers, but …

English Justice For An American Company?, Christopher French

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay addresses the Halliburton Co. v. Chubb Bermuda Insurance Ltd. case, which is pending before England's Supreme Court. The issue before the Court is whether it is appropriate for the "neutral" arbitrator, who has a history of serving as a party-appointed arbitrator for Chubb, to serve as the "neutral" arbitrator in the matter while simultaneously serving as a party-appointed arbitrator for Chubb in another related arbitration proceeding involving the same insurance policy form and the same underlying Deepwater Horizon incident. The lower courts declined to remove the arbitrator. The Essay also addresses the question of whether London arbitration proceedings …

A Right To Care, Stacey A. Tovino

Faculty Articles

In this Article, Professor Stacey Tovino examines the right to care through a personal and historical lens, then attempts to fill a scholarly gap in legal literature surrounding the right to skilled care and rehabilitation for patients with group or commercial insurance. Professor Tovino first recounts the history of Medicare coverage for skilled care and rehabilitation, then she examines the limitations of group and commercial insurance, finally concluding by asserting a right to care.

Ideology Meets Reality: What Works And What Doesn't In Patient Exposure To Health Care Costs, Victor Laurion, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

U.S. policymakers, scholars, and advocates have long displayed an ideological commitment to exposing insured patients to substantial out-of-pocket expenses. These commitments derive from both overt political ideologies, which favor individual responsibility and oppose redistribution of wealth and risks, as well as more-subtle ideological commitments of academic economists, which link observed patterns of consumption to value-claims about welfare. In this symposium contribution, we document those ideological commitments and juxtapose them with a review of the scientific evidence about the actual effects of patient cost-sharing. We find, as economic theory predicts, that patients exposed to healthcare costs consume less healthcare. However, a …

Insuring Against Cyber Risk: The Evolution Of An Industry (Introduction), Christopher French

Faculty Scholarship

Cyber risks are the newest risks of the 21st century. The breadth and cost of cyber attacks are astonishing. Worldwide damages caused by cyber attack are predicted to reach $6 trillion by 2021. Between 2015 and 2017, ransomware damages alone increased from $325 million to approximately $5 billion. In 2017, WannaCry ransomware shut down over 300,000 computer systems across 150 countries.

On April 13, 2018, the Penn State Law Review held a symposium to discuss the evolution of cyber risks and cyber insurance. The symposium was comprised of an eclectic group of legal practitioners and scholars who presented four articles. …