Scott Seaman Comments on Competing Proposed Pandemic Risk Program Plans

Hinshaw's Scott Seaman, a Chicago-based partner and co-chair of the firm's global Insurance Services Practice Group, was quoted by reporter Evan Weinberger in a Bloomberg Law article titled, "Chubb Pandemic Coverage Plan Exposes Industry Split."

The piece discusses various competing public-private pandemic risk program plans. As noted in the article, proposals offered by Chubb (an insurance company) and by U.S. House of Representatives member Carolyn Maloney (D. N.Y.) "envision a program where insurers offer pandemic coverage policies to businesses with the federal government bearing most of the coverage costs." Many others in the insurance industry support a program in which "[b]usinesses would purchase the coverage through state-regulated insurance companies and brokers."

Seaman believes that most of the state legislation is retroactive and unsustainable and that apart from constitutional and legal infirmities, they threaten to destroy much of the insurance industry's solvency. He contends that the most credible proposals involve establishing a federal scheme that: addresses future pandemics; does not involve retroactive legislative rewrites of policies; involves voluntary participation of insurers; and ultimately vests substantially all of the risk on the federal government.

Read the full article on the Bloomberg Law website.

"Chubb Pandemic Coverage Plan Exposes Industry Split" was published by Bloomberg Law on July 14, 2020.