REUTERS: U.S. legislation introduced on Tuesday would create a taxpayer-backed insurance program to protect businesses from revenue losses during future pandemics and require insurers to pay a slice of the claims.
While these policies may cover revenue losses from lightning strikes or cars crashing into buildings, they either exclude or do not specifically cover a pandemic, despite the business interruption it causes. Major insurance industry groups oppose having to share losses with the government, saying pandemics are"inherently uninsurable."Instead, they proposed putting the Federal Emergency Management Agency in charge of a fully taxpayer-backed program to protect businesses from future pandemic revenue losses.