Eli Lehrer featured on the Insurance Journal podcast
R Street President Eli Lehrer was interviewed by Andy Simpson of Insurance Journal for IJ’s podcast about the results of the 2012 elections and how they bode for the insurance industry. Among the topics covered are the ongoing implementations of the Dodd-Frank Act and the Affordable Care Act, as well as potential changes to federal subsidies for flood insurance, crop insurance and terrorism risk insurance.
Lehrer also discussed at length the trend in many of the 30 states run by Republican governors who have said they will leave implementation of a health insurance exchange up to the federal government. Lehrer said the relative desirability of this trend will vary from state to state, but that in many cases, the feds may be better positioned to manage an exchange than the states would be.
“If I lived in, say, the District of Columbia — where I do not live — where the government is widely known to be incompetent, I would prefer that the federal government run a local health exchange rather than the state doing it,” Lehrer told Insurance Journal in a recent interview.
But other states might be able to handle exchanges, if they choose to do so.
“If I lived in a well-governed state like Virginia, where I actually do live, or Utah or Michigan or another state that really knows how to run a government, I think the state probably could run it better. And as such, it is really different from state to state.”
Listen to the full podcast below:
