Dive Brief:
- Oscar Insurance Corp., valued earlier this year at $2.7 billion after a $400 million funding round, lost $52.2 million in New York state during the first half of the year, Bloomberg reported. The company disclosed the loss Wednesday in its latest filing with New York regulators.
- The carrier lost $17.9 million in Texas and $12.9 million in California during the same time period, Bloomberg added.
- For perspective, Oscar similarly lost $105.2 million in New York and New Jersey over the course of 2015.
Dive Insight:
Oscar's losses add the latest fuel to the fire over insurers struggling in the ACA marketplaces, heightening debate over the sustainability of Obamacare in its current form.
While the biggest players suffering losses--UnitedHealth, Humana and Aetna--have responded by pulling back their ACA participation, Oscar has no such fallback option given that it only offers individual policies.
Rather than scaling down its business, Oscar has focused this year on new strategies to reign in its losses. Those include launching its own in-house primary care clinic in New York, and slashing its New York provider network to three major systems--Montefiore, Mount Sinai and Long Island Health Network--to better control costs, coordination and the patient experience. The company also received permission to raise its 2017 rates an average of 20%.
The company continues to pin its future on being different, telling Vox after announcing its provider cutbacks in late July, "..if you don’t like it, we’ll help you switch out. But we’re going to be offering something very different from our competitors."