Included in President Obama’s nearly 200-page 2011 budget is a proposal often called “the reinsurance tax.” The proposal would eliminate the current tax deduction for excess premiums paid by insurers to offshore reinsurance affiliates. The move to eliminate this deduction is not new—it has been around for at least ten years. President Obama used the issue in his campaign, criticizing Sen. John McCain for wanting to “protect tax breaks for American corporations that hide their profits offshore.” But like any tax increase, someone has to pay it—in this case, property owners in catastrophe-prone states.

An effort to strip the federal health care reform law of a key provision failed in the U.S. House June 15.

A ranking member of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee is seeking answers to the bizarre action by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services that has apparently thwarted …  Read →

Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor told a group of independent insurance agents in Washington, D.C., that Congress should be “helping small business right now, not imposing more burdens on them.”

Eric …  Read →

If there is one thing scarier than the recent economic meltdown, it is a Congress and White House controlled by one party, with veto-proof power to enact laws that can …  Read →