R Street’s insurance policy program explores efficient and effective market-based approaches to public policy questions that involve the transfer of risk. Among its priorities are risk-based insurance regulation, ending environmentally destructive taxpayer subsidies through the National Flood Insurance Program and the Federal Crop Insurance Corp. and exploring the benefits of mitigation through programs like the RESTORE Act and the Coastal Barrier Resources System.
The Issue
Publications
At NCOIL, Anti-Rebating Debate Ponders Fitbits and Free Turkeys
Alan Smith
Is a free turkey a rebate? That was the question from Idaho Insurance Director Dean Cameron that stumped the experts.
One of the more interesting debates of the National Council of Insurance…
Reinsurance Could Protect Taxpayers From More NFIP Borrowing After Barry
R.J. Lehmann
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…
Flags don’t belong on shoes| Does flood insurance incentivize more damage?
R.J. Lehmann
From Brian Gongol Show:
Nike shouldn’t have had to back down from the Betsy Ross shoe, because they never should have made it in the first place. Also, an interview with RJ Lehmann of the R…
Ronald Reagan’s lasting environmental legacy
R.J. Lehmann
Few today remember President Ronald Reagan as an environmentalist, and with justifiable reason. Though as governor of California Reagan signed the California Environmental Quality Act and opposed…
American farmers and ranchers have spent decades establishing themselves as steady and reliable trading partners. In 2017, the last year before the trade wars began, about 20 percent of farm income…
June 26, 2019
Assembly Committee on Insurance
California Assembly
RE: SB 290 Natural disasters – Insurance and related alternative risk-transfer products
Chairman…
Flood Insurance Program Increasingly Underwater as Payouts Shatter Records
From Scientific American:
“The most likely explanation is that you have more people in coastal flood zones, where you get storm surge,” said R.J. Lehmann, director of insurance at the…
Dear Member,
My name is R.J. Lehmann and I am director of the Finance, Insurance and Trade Policy program at the R Street Institute, a free-market think tank in Washington, D.C. I write to…
The Honorable Maxine Waters
Chairwoman
House Financial Services Committee
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Patrick McHenry
Ranking Member
House Financial Services…
Misguided Editorialists Try to Raise the Beach House Bailout from the Dead
R.J. Lehmann
Each time it has been trotted out on the public stage, the Beach House Bailout has died an ignominious death. Leave it to the necromancers on the Tampa Bay Times editorial board to try to raise this…