Corona on down - Some guys have all the luck or things that make you go Hmmmmm!

[malaise]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertharrow/2016/03/14/health-insurance-start-up-oscar-lost-100m-in-2015/#7bd41dde7cef
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In February of 2016 Fidelity invested $400 million into Oscar Health Insurance, a NYC based start-up. The historically conservative investment fund valued Oscar at $2.7 billion. To date, Oscar has raised over $700 million, from big name investors including Google.

In March, however, Oscar disclosed its financials to New York and New Jersey state regulators, revealing heavy losses on its home turf of over $100 million. To understand Oscar’s struggle and why it still appeals to investors, one must see the company in the larger context of the health insurance sector.

Oscar’s CEO, Mario Schlosser, told Forbes that one chief driver behind their losses were expensive health network contracts. With few members, the new kid on the block had little negotiating power to drive down the medical cost of procedures. Last year, Oscar paid over 75% of its total premiums earned towards hospital costs. UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest health insurance company, paid just 63%. Going forward, Oscar hopes some of their losses can be mitigated, as contracts expire and they get to re-negotiate from a stronger position.

Just look at me now
https://www.hioscar.com/

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/kushner-coronavirus-testing-oscar-company/609139/

That wasn’t true. But in the following days, Oscar Health—a health-insurance company closely connected to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner—developed a government website with the features the president had described. A team of Oscar engineers, project managers, and executives spent about five days building a stand-alone website at the government’s request, an Oscar spokesperson told The Atlantic. The company even dispatched two employees from New York to meet in person with federal officials in Washington, D.C., the spokesperson said. Then the website was suddenly and mysteriously scrapped.

The site would not have helped many Americans even if it had launched. Today, more than two weeks after the president promised a national network of drive-through test sites, only a handful of such sites have opened, and fewer than 1 million Americans have been tested.

[Blue Owl]

1. K&R

Looks like Oscar went to Jared...

[malaise]

2. the grifter not the grouch