Iowa insurance market collapse could ground young entrepreneurs' dreams

Re:Iowa insurance market collapse could ground young entrepr... by harryh on Friday June 23, 2017 @11:57AM (#14620090)

It's worth noting that Iowa is in particular trouble because of a single patient that costs ~1M a month[1]. In a relatively small market you end up with an unstable situation when there are more than 1 insurers because none of them know if they will have to take on this very expensive patient in any given year.

1. https://www.balloon-juice.com/2017/04/21/catching-the-fallin...

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Re:Iowa insurance market collapse could ground young entrepr... by rasz on Friday June 23, 2017 @01:29PM (#14620964)

How exactly do you run a $1 million/month health bill? In EU that would mean one open heart surgery/heart/lung transplant done by world class specialists flown from all over the place every single month.

This sounds like a scam.

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Re:Iowa insurance market collapse could ground young entrepr... by harryh on Friday June 23, 2017 @01:34PM (#14621023)

Apparently the patient is a teenage boy with hemophilia. I'm fairly confident that it isn't a scam.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/06/01/io...

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Re:Iowa insurance market collapse could ground young entrepr... by rasz on Friday June 23, 2017 @01:56PM (#14621219)

Hemophilia Federation of America: "A million dollars per month is something we've never heard of," sure makes it sound like a scam, maybe by hospital?

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Re:Iowa insurance market collapse could ground young entrepr... by harryh on Friday June 23, 2017 @02:07PM (#14621318)

Given that the insurance companies know exactly who the patient is, exactly what treatments he is receiving, and exactly when and where they are happening it seems like it would be pretty easy to uncover a scam if there was one. And they have a lot of incentive to do so!

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Re:Iowa insurance market collapse could ground young entrepr... by rasz on Friday June 23, 2017 @05:28PM (#14622941)

Would you consider $1 mil/month a good incentive to scam?

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Re:Iowa insurance market collapse could ground young entrepr... by TYPE_FASTER on Friday June 23, 2017 @02:10PM (#14621337)

Well, that's coming from the insurer, so I'm sure they're not exaggerating (/s)...

> Iowa’s largest health insurer, Wellmark Blue Cross & Blue Shield, has cited the case as an extreme example of exploding health care costs.

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