Hacker News with Generative AI: Insurance

Luigi Mangione-inspired ballot initiative targets health insurance denials (newsweek.com)
A proposed California ballot initiative—informally named after Luigi Mangione, the alleged assassin of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson—aims to bar insurers from delaying or denying doctor-recommended procedures or medications.
Medicare Would Be in Real Danger of Collapse Under Dr Oz (jacobin.com)
By hoodwinking seniors into private Medicare Advantage plans, insurers profit by denying care and bankrupting hospitals. Continuing their crusade against Medicare, Dr Oz and the Trump administration plan to make those plans mandatory.
Tesla Hate Is Making Insurance More Expensive for Owners (gizmodo.com)
Teslas are getting more expensive to insure thanks to the manufacturer’s sliding fortunes and reports of vandalism against the cars.
Allstate Insurance sued for delivering personal info in plaintext, to anyone (theregister.com)
New York State has sued Allstate Insurance for operating websites so badly designed they would deliver personal information in plain-text to anyone that went looking for it.
Lawsuit Alleges GM Illegally Sold Arkansans' Driving Data to Insurance Companies (insurancejournal.com)
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin sued General Motors and its subsidiary OnStar this week, alleging the car manufacturer deceived Arkansans by collecting and selling driver information to third parties, who then sold the data to insurance companies.
Florida insurers steered money to investors while claiming losses, study says (tampabay.com)
TALLAHASSEE — While Florida insurers claimed to be losing money in the wake of hurricanes Irma and Michael, their parent companies and affiliates were making billions of dollars, according to a study obtained by the Times/Herald.
IVF insurance startup Future Family promises a baby or your money back (techcrunch.com)
For decades, couples going through in vitro fertilization have had to spend tens of thousands of dollars on the procedures with no guarantee of success.
California homeowners to fund half of high-risk insurer's $1B 'bailout' (calmatters.org)
After saying it would run out of funds by March, California’s last-resort fire insurance provider will impose a special charge of $1 billion on insurance companies — which will in turn pass the costs along to homeowners — the first such move in more than three decades.
'It's a money game to them':son takes on UnitedHealth over elderly father's care (theguardian.com)
Two years ago, Robby Martin got an unsettling call from his father, Jackie. The 82-year-old told his son that a representative of the insurance giant UnitedHealth Group had barged into his nursing home room at 2.30 in the morning, announcing that he was going to be checked out at the end of the week.
California's Fair Plan Gets $1B Bailout (nytimes.com)
California’s home insurance plan of last resort, designed for people who can’t get coverage on the private market, does not have enough money to pay claims from the Los Angeles wildfires and is getting an infusion of cash from regular insurers.
Ask HN: Anyone pursuing this AI image idea (images to list of insured losses)? (ycombinator.com)
The idea is for AI to interpret photos and videos and create a detailed and accurate list of exactly what was lost, so claimants can collect the full value of their insured losses.
State Farm seeks 22% emergency rate hike (ocregister.com)
State Farm General requested a 22% emergency rate hike in California on Monday, Feb. 3 to cover losses from the Los Angeles County wildfires and stop its “financial deterioration,” the company wrote in a letter filed with the state’s insurance commission.
GM faces ban on selling driver data that can be used to raise insurance rates (arstechnica.com)
GM sold geolocation and other driving data without adequate consent, FTC says.
L.A. Fires: We Can't Let Insurance Companies Exploit the Disaster (rollingstone.com)
Mother Nature exploded in Los Angeles this month with the most damaging wildfires in the city’s, and likely the nation’s, history.
GM parks claims driver location data was given to insurers, pushing up premiums (theregister.com)
General Motors on Thursday said that it has reached a settlement with the FTC "to address privacy concerns about our now-discontinued Smart Driver program."
Is the world becoming uninsurable? (charleshughsmith.substack.com)
I ask the question, "is the world becoming uninsurable?" not as an expert on the insurance industry but as a homeowner who can no longer obtain hurricane insurance, and as an observer of long-term trends keenly interested in the way global risks pile up either unseen, denied or misinterpreted until it's too late to mitigate them.
Allstate used GasBuddy and other apps to track driving behavior: lawsuit (arstechnica.com)
Texas has sued insurance provider Allstate, alleging that the firm and its data broker subsidiary used data from apps like GasBuddy, Routely, and Life360 to quietly track drivers and adjust or cancel their policies.
Texas Sues Allstate over Its Collection of Driver Data (nytimes.com)
The State of Texas sued Allstate on Monday, accusing the insurer of illegally tracking drivers by way of their phones through a subsidiary called Arity that claimed to have the “world’s largest driving behavior database.”
California overhauled its insurance system. Then Los Angeles caught fire (grist.org)
California Fires Expose a $1T Hole in US Home Insurance (bloomberg.com)
The wildfires terrorizing Los Angeles this week have been like something out of a movie: vast, fast-moving, unpredictable, merciless.
California's insurance is in crisis. The solution will cost homeowners a ton (cnn.com)
Waymo robotaxis safer than any human-driven cars (cleantechnica.com)
Swiss Re, a top reinsurer globally, has analyzed a lot of data, and it has determined that Waymo’s robotaxis are safer than human drivers, and even safer than human drivers of new cars with the latest advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).
New Data Reveal Climate Change-Driven Insurance Crisis Is Spreading (senate.gov)
Washington, D.C.—Today, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, released a first-of-its kind public dataset and accompanying staff report that expose the scale of the climate change-driven crisis in homeowners’ insurance.
Insurers rely on doctors whose judgments have been criticized by courts (propublica.org)
In a New Orleans courtroom one afternoon this April, three federal appeals court judges questioned a lawyer for the country’s largest health insurance company.
Porch Pirates Steal So Many Packages That Now You Can Get Insurance (msn.com)
A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles (waymo.com)
Understanding the safety impact of Automated Driving Systems (ADS) is crucial for their widespread adoption, yet robust real-world evaluation remains a critical area of development.
Swiss Re study: Waymo is safer than even the most advanced human-driven vehicles (waymo.com)
Today, we’re sharing our new cutting-edge research with Swiss Re, one of the world’s leading reinsurers, analyzing liability claims related to collisions from 25.3 million fully autonomous miles driven by Waymo.
Insurers Are Deserting Homeowners as Climate Shocks Worsen (nytimes.com)
The insurance crisis spreading across the United States arrived at Richard D. Zimmel’s door last week in the form of a letter.
When Is Insurance Worth It? (entropicthoughts.com)
TL;DR: If you want to know whether getting insurance is worth it, use the Kelly Insurance Calculator. If you want to know why or how, read on.
Insurance companies aren't the main villain of the U.S. health system (noahpinion.blog)
When UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down in the street in cold blood the other day, a bunch of people on the internet gloated and cheered: