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U.S. Supreme Court rejects Republican challenge to Obamacare law

If Obamacare had been struck down, up to 20 million Americans stood to lose their medical insurance and insurers could have once again refused to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions. Obamacare expanded the Medicaid state-federal healthcare program and created marketplaces for private insurance.

The provision, called the “individual mandate,” required Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a financial penalty. It marked the third time the court has preserved Obamacare since its 2010 enactment. 

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US govt to invest $3.2bn to develop pills to treat Covid

The new programme, coming on top of the $18 billion success story that resulted in effective vaccines in record time, will create platforms that will initially target coronaviruses, and then could be expanded to other viruses with pandemic potential – helping to better prepare the nation for future viral threats, the US department of health and human services announced on Thursday.

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Reinsurers look at dumping coal from bulk-buy policies in green gambit

Five of the world’s six largest reinsurers – Swiss Re, Munich Re, Hannover Re, SCOR and Lloyd’s of London – have already scaled back bespoke coverage for coal projects. But only Swiss Re, in a statement in March, has said it will go further and tighten its treaty reinsurance stance.

A rail contractor to Adani Enterprises’ giant Australian coal project last month, for example, asked the Australian government for help to obtain insurance that it was not able to secure from the market.
“The first consequence is insurance is harder to get, the second consequence is it’s expensive, the third consequence is there are all sorts of caveats on it and at the extreme you might not be offered it”, said Paul Merrey, insurance partner at KPMG.

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Global life insurance outlook revised to stable amid brightening growth prospects:Moody’s

“Strong solvency capital ratios globally underpin our view of the outlook,” Moody’s Vice President Manoj Jethani says.

“Although pandemic mortality continues to weaken profitability, the overall impact on the credit profile of life insurers has been less severe than originally expected due to differences in demographics of the general versus the insured population, as well the benefits of diversification from longevity-type insurance products, ” he adds.

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US, China trade war costs global value chains 3-5 years of growth, says UN

The report from the United Nations Development Programme looking at the post-pandemic future of global value chains found that trade within those supply lines shrank in absolute terms along with other types of trade. Still, they’ll remain at the core of economic recovery in the Asia-Pacific region even as global manufacturers consider moving production closer to home.

The supply troubles come as the cost of shipping goods across the globe is skyrocketing, threatening to boost consumer prices and compounding concerns in global markets already bracing for accelerating inflation.

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