Free Republic

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) asserted that cross-sex hormones and surgeries were "medically necessary" so that insurance companies would pay for those procedures, allowing concerns about the treatments' affordability to dictate claims about their effectiveness, newly unsealed court documents show. WPATH's standards of care, which guide clinical practice in the United States, were updated in 2022 to include language about the medical necessity of hormones and surgeries because, as one WPATH official wrote in an email, the group was frustrated with America's "obtuse and unhealthy system of healthcare 'coverage.'" Most private insurance plans and state Medicaid policies...

The real responsibility for California’s high insurance premiums lies in state politicians’ and the governor’s policy decisions. Most insurers say because of California’s high cost to rebuild, they can’t keep premiums artificially low any longer. And why are California’s rebuilding and building costs so high? The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA): As Ed Ring reported for the Globe, over 50+ years, “CEQA has acquired layers of legislative updates and precedent setting court rulings, warping it into a beast that denies clarity to developers and derails projects. When projects do make it through the CEQA gauntlet, the price of passage adds...

(RNS) — The Rev. John Parks was taking his first sabbatical in 40 years of ministry when he got a call from his church’s accountant with some bad news. Church Mutual, the church’s insurance company, had dropped them. “This does not make sense,” Parks, the pastor of Ashford Community Church in Houston, recalls thinking at the time. “We’ve never filed a claim.” Five months and 13 insurance companies later, the church finally found replacement coverage for $80,000 per year, up from the $23,000 they had been paying. “It’s been an adventure,” said the 69-year-old Parks from his home in Houston,...

I looked in my wallet because the little good angel voice in my head said "when was the last time you printed out new proof of car insurance forms?" I looked and saw I need to print new ones, when I logged into the website it said "We have re-rated your policy for the next 6 months, $xxxx will be deducted from your account on 7/31/2024" I was like ??? it should be $xxx I called them and they said "it is not your fault, but we don't know why" I called my state ins tzar and they said, wow...

Curtis Murrah says he’d been a loyal customer with USAA for 28 years — until his wife rang him up one day saying she couldn’t make their mortgage payment because there wasn’t any money in their account. Murrah, who’s based in Georgia, says he took a closer look at his accounts and discovered someone was making deposits in and out of his accounts. “It was like they were playing mind games,” he told News 4 San Antonio. “They would deposit $9,800 then turn right around and withdraw $9,800. They would deposit $4,000, turn right around and withdrew it.” Murrah contacted...

READ MORE: The insurance on my 2012 Mazda went up 72% to $233 a month!' A prominent insurance provider has aired an ultimatum to the entire state of California. The firm, State Farm General, asked the state’s Department of Insurance Thursday to let them raise residential insurance rates for millions of citizens, or see them move out. The move indicates financial trouble for the insurance giant, which currently covers homes razed by wildfires. State Farm disclosed it is seeking a 30 percent rate hike for homeowners, a 36 percent increase for condo owners, and a 52 percent increase for renters...

Former BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee (BCBST) employee Tanja Benton has been awarded over $680,000 by a Tennessee federal jury following a verdict that the insurer failed to offer reasonable accommodation for her religious beliefs. The jury concluded that BCBST “did not prove by a preponderance of the evidence either that it had offered a reasonable accommodation to Plaintiff or that it could not reasonably accommodate the Plaintiff’s religious beliefs without undue hardship.” The total damages awarded to Benton amounted to $687,240, which included $177,240 in back pay, $10,000 in compensatory damages, and $500,000 in punitive damages. In a related case,...

State Farm recently requested its largest home insurance rate increase to date, a move that would worsen the insurance crisis in California but also signaled that the company may be in financial trouble. State Farm General, the company’s California subsidiary, recently submitted a request to the California Department of Insurance to raise insurance rates for homeowners, condo owners and renters in the Golden State.

CV NEWS FEED // The Delaware Senate has approved legislation requiring Medicaid and most private health insurance plans to cover abortion. According to the Associated Press, Democratic senators passed the legislation on a party-line vote, though it still needs to be approved by Democratic Gov. John Carney. The bill does include an exemption allowing churches and religious employers to seek a waiver from covering abortions, but other insurance providers must provide abortions without charging copays or applying deductibles. The coverage would be limited to $750 per person per year. The bill is one of many recent anti-life laws, as Delaware...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL) and co-counsel Jonathan F. Mitchell secured a resounding win before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Braidwood Management Inc. v. Becerra. A unanimous panel of the Fifth Circuit held that a key provision of the Affordable Care Act violates Article II’s Appointments Clause by empowering the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to dictate the preventive care that all private insurers must cover. In other words—unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats don’t get to make unilateral decisions about Americans’ healthcare coverage, which has led to tremendous increases in the cost of...

Hundreds of thousands of pet owners have been left without coverage after Nationwide abruptly canceled pet insurance policies earlier this month. The company suddenly announced it was dropping policies for around 100,000 pets - blaming the soaring cost of veterinary care and recent underwriting changes. In a statement on June 14, it said the policies would be dropped when they expire, which is typically between now and next summer. Nationwide said the non-renewals are not associated with the pets' age, breed or prior claims history. But an affected pet owner has dogs aged 10 and eight who have recently had...

Popular smartphone apps used to track people’s location and provide weather reports may hand over driving data to a firm that sells the information to insurance companies for the purposes of setting rates for unsuspecting motorists... apps Life360, MyRadar and Gas Buddy are providing user data to an Allstate-owned company, Arity, which computes the numbers to create a “driving score” that takes into account any risky behavior behind the wheel... That information is then sold to other insurance firms — with user consent — which set rates for their customers ... Life360, which is used by parents to keep track...

More than one fifth of all crashed cars are now totaled by insurance assessors. Proportion of new vehicles written off has increased due to high repair costs. The cost of fixing ADAS systems designed to prevent accidents is often deemed not worth it. The rocketing cost of repairing crashed cars means 21 percent of wrecks now result in a vehicle being totaled by insurance firms, a five-fold increase versus 1980. And some experts think that number could jump to a staggering 30 percent as cars become even more complex. Ironically, it’s the same ADAS driver aids designed to save us...

Nationwide, the nation's largest pet insurer, is dropping coverage for about 100,000 pets across the country, blaming the rising costs of veterinary care and other factors that it says are threatening long-term viability and profitability of its pet insurance business. "As pet lovers ourselves, we understand the emotions connected to the protection of our family pets. Inflation in the cost of veterinary care and other factors have led to recent underwriting changes and plan availability in some states — difficult actions that are necessary to ensure a financially sustainable future for our pet insurance line of business," the company said...

Hundreds of nursing homes in Florida have been forced to shut their doors over the past five years because of the soaring cost of commercial property insurance in the state. In the five-year period ending in 2023, an average of 146 nursing homes or assisted-living facilities in Florida have closed each year, according to the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration. During that same five-year period, commercial property insurance premiums rose 125% in Florida. Last year alone, annual premiums rose by around 27% in the state, according to Bloomberg News.

Four years since Covid-19 lockdown curbs forced Burger & Lobster to close its restaurants, the purveyor of gourmet patties and crustacean rolls is still battling with its insurance company to recover some of the resulting losses. Alongside more than 20 other businesses including the owners of Hawksmoor steakhouses and Newcastle Falcons rugby club, the chain has brought a claim against Allianz in London’s High Court after the insurer declined to pay out on its business interruption policy, a type of cover designed to compensate for lost revenues. The case is one of dozens being fought between insurers and UK policyholders...

[H/T Grey_whiskers]https://twitter.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1785134881481048569April 29, 2024

Now John Eastman, one of the attorneys who worked with former President Donald Trump, has been debanked by both Bank of America and USAA. That USAA debanked Eastman for his ties to the 2020 election contest comes as a surprise. USAA — now an insurance, financial services, and banking powerhouse headquartered in San Antonio, Texas — got its start in 1922 as a mutual self-insurance company for Army officers. Its clientele is mostly service members, veterans, and their families, with membership limited to those who can show a military tie. That means that, per a 2019 Pew Research poll, its...

Amid the ongoing insurance crisis in California, Allstate says it could soon resume writing new policies, though the move would come with some conditions. Allstate Insurance stopped writing new homeowners policies in California two years ago but says it may start offering them again if the state Department of Insurance will allow them to use catastrophic modeling when requesting rate increases. Catastrophic models are computerized reports that simulate potential catastrophic events and could be used to justify rate increases.

The state has confirmed an additional case of pertussis — or whooping cough — on Hawaii Island amid an outbreak that has so far sickened 11 since March. HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - The state has confirmed an additional case of pertussis — or whooping cough — on Hawaii Island amid an outbreak that has so far sickened 11 since March. Several of the recent cases have been in infants too young to be fully vaccinated. Officials said the cases indicate “community spread” of pertussis on Hawaii Island. Because of that, the state Health Department is strongly recommending that parents stay up...