It is a very real worry, and we have to be thinking about it. As realists, we think it may be impossible to protect us forever from everything. Life re-insurers are urging Congress to pass legislation that would provide a financial safety back-up if a major terrorist strike hits the United States. It's a public policy issue, as, in many cases, group health insurance is the only health insurance coverage that a worker might have. Since 9/11, the group life reinsurance companies have been concerned about the effects of a major terrorist attack. Do you want to have a high concentration of risk in a geographic part of any city where, if something goes wrong, there would be a substantial impact? The question, from the insurance industry perspective, is would you want to insure large office buildings and provide workers' compensation to employees where you have thousands of people working in the same building or location?

If the Act is not renewed or replaced by something else, a lot of large commercial lines companies will be the first to feel the impact. But it affords some comfort that the industry would not go bankrupt as the result of another major terrorist attack. It is a backstop that will probably never be used by the insurance industry unless there is a huge financial catastrophe as a result of a major attack. In the wake of 9/11, Congress approved a federal terror risk insurance-type program as a backstop to the industry. It is challenging when we try to figure out "what ifs," but all insurance companies must do this. There is no way to completely mitigate risk in this case because nobody knows when the next terrorist attack will be or in what form it would take. It has changed the way a lot of companies look at aggregation of risk (how much of what type of business is concentrated where).