Lehmann is co-founder of the R Street Institute in Washington, D.C. where he serves as director, Finance, Insurance & Trade, and is a senior fellow. He can be reached at rlehmann@rstreet.org.
April 9, 2020
As is by now obvious to everyone, Americans are driving less these days amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Across the country, schools and businesses are shut down. Many areas have curfews and stay-at-home orders that ask citizens to limit any nonessential …
March 26, 2020
Over the eight years of our existence, the R Street Institute has offered critiques of government-backed entities that provide insurance or reinsurance for flood, crop, windstorm, earthquake, auto, workers’ comp, nuclear energy liability and terrorism. We have warned that such …
March 24, 2020
The COVID-19 outbreak is expected to hit the workers’ compensation insurance market hard. After a long stretch of declining costs that saw rates fall nationwide from 2015 to 2019, claims for workers infected by the virus while on the job …
March 22, 2020
Californians statewide are huddled at home under a “shelter-in-place” order handed down March 20 by Gov. Gavin Newsom to stem the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Unfortunately, nature does not take a break for pandemics. California also remains under wildfire …
January 24, 2020
Though tensions were high coming in, President Donald Trump left the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with at least a temporary truce on one of his latest threatened tariff fights. Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly came to …
December 17, 2019
There has been much talk in recent years about the need to “drain the swamp” in Washington and bring public accountability to a federal government mired in self-dealing and special interests. But Congress this week will almost certainly approve a …
December 4, 2019
The 2019 edition of the R Street Institute’s annual Insurance Regulation Report Card is out and, for the second year in a row, Louisiana has the ignominious distinction of finishing dead last. By our lights, the Pelican State has the …
October 27, 2019
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has started the process to produce a review guide for predictive models that could guide how state insurance departments oversee insurers use of so-called “big data.” But reports from the field suggest that, even …
August 5, 2019
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has taken the first step in what stands to be a more than yearlong process to update the rules states use to police impermissible “rebates” offered by insurers and insurance producers. By a unanimous …
July 12, 2019
The impending strike of Tropical Storm Barry on Southeast Louisiana, coming at a moment when the Mississippi River is cresting at heights not seen since 1927, has many fearing a replay of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. …