Each newspaper in the country in the last week or so has issued its annual early-spring prediction of where Major League Baseball teams are going to finish this year in their respective divisions (disappointing to see a lot of fourth-place picks for the Red Sox—I'm seeing a World Series win).
Inspired by these sports writers willing to go out on a limb and fearlessly predict the future, I offer up my own predictions of some key insurance events that will come to pass between now and Game 7 of the 2012 Red Sox-Phillies World Series (as long as a very wet October pushes the season finale past the elections).
1. The Supreme Court will rule unconstitutional the individual-mandate portion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in a 5-4 decision. The dissenting opinions will be nasty, brutish—and long. The Obama administration and its Senate allies will try to craft a solution that uses the federal tax code to incentivize universal coverage—to get around having to rely on the commerce clause. The attempt goes nowhere in the bitterly partisan House.
2. In an election that turns out to be not very close in either the electoral or popular vote, President Obama returns to the White House, aided by an economy that continues to improve over the spring and summer and into the fall. While much of his venom on the campaign trail is reserved for House Republicans, he makes plenty of pointed jabs at the “Citizens United/strip search” Supreme Court.
3. A Cat-3 or greater hurricane hits Florida—how much longer can the state's streak of “where's the wind” luck continue? The disaster strikes in the heat of the fall campaign, and the incumbent administration pulls out all the stops in providing much-publicized disaster aid in this key battleground state. The mainstream press repeatedly points out the difference with the prior administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.
4. Talk of a “transitioning” insurance market gives way to a broad consensus that pricing conditions can be characterized as “hard.”
5. More U.S. insurers start talking publicly about the potential impact of global warming on their property portfolios.
6. Enterprise risk management will be the subject of at least one flashy feature story (the crystal ball is cloudy as to whether or not it's on the cover) in a general-interest business publication, such as Fortune, Forbes or Businessweek.
7. One brave and/or foolhardy insurer will write the first coverage for a flying car, one version of which (with a $279,000 price tag) was unveiled at the New York Auto Show on the day I write this (April 4).
Bryant Rousseau
Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]
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