The twittersphere is full of wild speculation right now about how U.S. insurance companies will soon start excluding Ebola from health insurance policies. Gary Flynn, an event cancellation broker at Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group Plc in London, is quoted in a Reuters article saying: “What underwriters are doing at the moment is they’re generally providing quotes either excluding or including Ebola — and it’s much more expensive if Ebola is included.” Flynn is referring to insurance in West African countries like Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, where Ebola is endemic. Not the U.S. But now Alex Jones and others are scaremongering and vilifying insurance companies in general.
The Reuters article also quotes sources from ACE and Aon speculating how Ebola risk plays into underwriting travel and business interruption and other insurance in those countries, and that workers compensation insurance which is regulated by state and federal law, would not be affected.
Eager to grasp for headlines, the fact that these brokers are only referring to insuring risk as it relates to West Africa has clearly been lost in the fear-mongering.
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