Pandemic Risk Programs — PPP vs. PRIA
First published April 10, 2020
Now that the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) has taken form and policymakers begin exploring whether the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) could serve as a model going forward, it is useful to compare the PPP with a hypothetical Pandemic Risk Protection Act (PRIA).
The financing of a future pandemic risk program is the easy part to think through. The only ones with enough money to fund the economy during another COVID-19 scale lockdown are those who can print it. Any private funding within a pandemic risk program would be on the margins at most.
The more interesting questions for such a program are:
- What benefits should be available to impacted businesses?
- Which businesses should be entitled to claim those benefits?
- Who has the infrastructural capabilities to deliver the necessary scale of benefits?
Neither the PPP model nor the PRIA model has good answers to all three questions. However, by comparing these approaches we can begin to see the outlines of what a viable program would look like. The attached is an effort to advance that conversation.
