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Dental and medical health insurance are converging. Right here’s what it

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Well being insurers are transferring in on the worthwhile turf dental insurers have claimed for many years; the variety of well being plans providing grownup dental advantages greater than doubled previously two years, in keeping with a brand new survey of dental- and health-insurance leaders we performed earlier this yr.

Because the convergence accelerates, extra customers can anticipate their well being plans to supply dental insurance coverage, albeit with a separate premium – a mannequin that would come to dominate the market within the subsequent few years.

With any basic shift in healthcare, nonetheless, comes a slew of pressing, complicated questions: Will some dental payers be left within the mud? How can they greatest adapt to those altering circumstances? What are the obstacles to convergence? And what is going to this shift imply for customers?

Convergence: a possibility or a menace?
Whereas the overwhelming majority of customers nonetheless depend on standalone dental insurance coverage, such insurers are quick discovering the bottom shifting beneath their ft: in keeping with a latest survey, by 2025, most foresee partnering with a well being insurer and almost half anticipate advantages to be bundled.

But whereas 28 p.c of dental-plan leaders see this as a possibility, almost half (49 p.c) understand it as each a possibility and a menace.

One want look no additional than the promise of value-based well being plans at this time to understand the potential upsides: partnering with the best well being plan – and getting access to its capital, scale, community and technological infrastructure – can present dental insurers with a extra holistic view of their sufferers and assist ship higher well being outcomes to extra sufferers at a decrease value.

But a few of these very belongings give well being plans the flexibility to upend susceptible dental payers. Executives we spoke to famous that well being insurers wield deeper pockets, have “extra premium to play with” – which means they’ll decrease costs extra flexibly than dental plans – and may provide one-stop-shop comfort that can be particularly interesting to youthful clients.

On the identical time, dental payers eyeing potential partnerships could also be cautious concerning the healthcare trade’s tendency towards deliberate – generally reluctant – change, as evidenced by the gradual adoption of pay-for-performance reimbursement fashions. And insurers have nonetheless not seen the blueprint for integrating the 2 merchandise and coordinating subsequent care between physicians and dentists.

Worse, well being plans will not be the one ones excited about competing in a market traditionally dominated by conventional standalone plans. Half of the executives surveyed consider that non-medical, ancillary insurers are additionally exerting vital stress on oral advantages.  Whereas a net-entrant into this area, many consider they might start grabbing membership and market share.

To thrive – and to search out the best partnerships – dental plans might want to get proactive and strategic: innovating in areas like various fee fashions, tele-dentistry and information sharing; tackling their know-how debt; optimizing processes by way of information administration methods and improved working metrics; and exploring their very own choices for diversification, be it by turning into third-party directors, buying or merging with different firms or providing ancillary merchandise (e.g. imaginative and prescient, listening to, life, pet) of their very own.

“It’s not just like the mouth isn’t linked to the physique”
Even supposing solely 37 p.c of US adults visited the dentist final yr, respondents to the survey say the largest issue driving dental-and-health plan convergence is the mixing of oral well being into total well being. This integration – mixed with value-based dentistry, partnerships with well being plans and the truth that having dental protection is the perfect determinant of whether or not a person will make common dental visits – ought to finally result in the next quantity of visits total.

On the medical facet, dental-health plan partnerships – particularly these with efficient know-how platforms – can drive higher well being outcomes, care coordination and larger simplicity for customers used to navigating a posh well being system.

The acquisition of a one-product, two-premium plan (i.e., dental advantages bundled with broader medical health insurance) also needs to converse to a millennial client base more and more in quest of comfort. As different insurance coverage markets converge, there could even be alternatives for enabling customers to bundle medical, dental, imaginative and prescient, and pet insurance coverage into single buying choices. Akin to the recognition of bundling house, life, and auto…some consider that this development could transfer in the direction of healthcare.

Although Covid-19 could sow uncertainty into the approaching convergence of dental and well being plans, now just isn’t the time for dental payers to take a seat idly by. With the momentum for bundling with well being plans rising and competitors from ancillary insurers heating up, solely those that take proactive steps to stake out a spot for themselves on this aggressive panorama will thrive as convergence accelerates. So, too, will their members.

Picture: Dmitrii_Guzhanin, Getty Photos

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Subsequent Insurance coverage Mentioned to Search $2.25 Billion Worth in Funding

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CapitalG logo on a mobile device.

Photographer: Google. It has a income of 117 billion {dollars}. (Photograph by Alexander Pohl/NurPhoto through Getty Pictures

Subsequent Insurance coverage is in talks to boost new capital in a spherical that values the insurance coverage expertise startup at about $2.25 billion, in line with individuals acquainted with the matter.

Alphabet Inc.’s CapitalG is in talks to guide the roughly $250 million funding spherical for the Palo Alto, California-based firm, the individuals mentioned, asking to not be recognized as a result of the matter is personal.

The spherical would about double Subsequent Insurance coverage’s valuation from its final fundraising. It final raised $250 million in October from German reinsurer Munich Re, which gave it a valuation of greater than $1 billion.

The spherical hasn’t been finalized and its phrases may nonetheless change.

Representatives for Subsequent Insurance coverage and CapitalG didn’t reply to requests for remark.

Subsequent Insurance coverage, which caters to small companies, can be backed by buyers together with Redpoint Ventures, Nationwide Mutual Insurance coverage Co. and American Categorical Ventures.

On-line insurance coverage firm Hippo Enterprises Inc. closed a funding spherical in July valuing it at $1.5 billion. Shares of Lemonade Inc., a New York-based, venture-backed insurer that went public in July, have gained 88% since then.

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Scooter companies Bird, Lime seeing increase in user injuries

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Andrew Hardy was crossing the street on an electric scooter in downtown Los Angeles when a car struck him at 50 miles per hour and flung him 15 feet in the air before he smacked his head on the pavement and fell unconscious.

The 26-year-old snapped two bones in each leg, broke a thighbone, shattered a kneecap, punctured a lung and fractured three vertebrae in his neck, in addition to sustaining a head injury.

“My brother thought I was dead,” said Hardy, who wasn’t wearing a helmet.

Doctors told Hardy he’d likely be paralyzed for life. Five months later, he has learned to walk again. But he says he’ll never ride another scooter.

“These scooters should not be available to the public,” Hardy said. “Those things are like a death wish.”

As stand-up electric scooters have rolled into more than 100 cities worldwide, many of the people riding them are ending up in the emergency room with serious injuries. Others have been killed. There are no comprehensive statistics available but a rough count by The Associated Press of media reports turned up at least 11 electric scooter rider deaths in the U.S. since the beginning of 2018. Nine were on rented scooters and two on ones the victims owned.

With summer fast approaching, the numbers will undoubtedly grow as more riders take to the streets. Despite the risks, demand for the two-wheeled scooters continues to soar, popularized by companies like Lime and Bird. In the U.S. alone, riders took 38.5 million trips on rentable scooters in 2018, according to the National Association of City Transportation Officials.

Man seriously injured after scooter accident
Andrew Hardy was seriously injured riding a scooter in Los Angeles after being hit by a car.AP

Riders adore the free-flying feel of the scooters that have a base the size of a skateboard and can rev up to 15 miles per hour. They’re also cheap and convenient, costing about $1 to unlock with a smartphone app and about 15 cents per minute to ride. And in many cities, they can be dropped off just about anywhere after a rider reaches their destination.

But pedestrians and motorists scorn the scooters as a nuisance at best and a danger at worst.

Cities, meanwhile, can hardly keep up. In many cases, scooter-sharing companies dropped them onto sidewalks overnight without warning.

Regulations vary from place to place. In New York and the U.K., electric scooters are illegal on public roads and sidewalks, even though riders routinely flout the law. Last week in the Swedish city of Helsingborg, a rider was struck and killed by a car just one day after scooters were introduced there, leading to immediate calls for a ban. And in Nashville, Tennessee, where another rider was killed, the city’s mayor warned scooter operators they had 30 days to clean up their act or he would propose a ban.

Fed up with the thousands of scooters flooding Paris streets, Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced new regulations Thursday limiting the number of scooter operators and imposing a 5 mile-per-hour speed limit in areas with heavy foot traffic. The city has already imposed a 135 euro ($150) fine on anyone who rides scooters on sidewalks.

Isabelle Albertin, a pianist at Paris’ famed Opera Garnier, suffered a double fracture of her right arm after she was run down by an electric scooter on May 17. She is suing the city and has started an organization to push for a ban.

“On the sidewalks of Paris, it’s a total madhouse. We pedestrians are totally insecure,” she told Le Parisien newspaper.

Data on injuries or fatalities linked to scooters is hard to come by because the industry is so new. In Austin, Texas, public health officials working with the Centers for Disease Control counted 192 scooter-related injuries in three months in 2018. Nearly half were head injuries, including 15% that were traumatic brain injuries like concussions and bleeding of the brain. Less than 1% of the injured riders wore a helmet.

Bird, one of the largest scooter-sharing companies, dropped its scooters on the streets of Santa Monica, California, in September 2017 and within a few months riders were showing up at the emergency room, according to Dr. Tarak Trivedi, an emergency room physician in Los Angeles and co-author of one of the first peer-reviewed studies of scooter injuries. The following year, Trivedi and his colleagues counted 249 scooter injuries, and more than 40% were head injuries. Just 4% were wearing a helmet.

“I don’t think our roads are ready for this,” Trivedi said.

Bird and Lime both recommend that riders wear helmets, and they’ve handed out tens of thousands for free. But last year, Bird successfully fought a California proposal that would have required helmets for adults, maintaining that scooters should follow the same laws as electric bikes that don’t require adult helmets.

Bird says helmet requirements are off-putting to riders and could lead to fewer scooters on the road. Almost counterintuitively, the company argues that it’s better to have more riders than less because it forces drivers to pay attention to them.

There’s a safety in numbers effect, where the motorists know that there’s people out on the street, so they act accordingly,” said Paul Steely White, director of safety policy and advocacy for Bird.

Getting people to wear helmets is a challenge. Riders don’t want exposure to lice or germs that could be found in shared helmets, and many make a spontaneous decision to scoot while they’re already out and about.

That was the case when Drew Howerton, 19, hopped on a Lime scooter on a whim last October in Austin. He recalls signing a waiver that said he should wear a helmet, but he didn’t have one on him.

“I didn’t show up in Austin thinking I’m going to ride a scooter today, better bring my helmet,” Howerton said.

Scooter-sharing companies generally restrict riding to those 18 years and up, but some children, or their parents, have found ways around that. A 5-year-old boy died in Oklahoma after he fell from a scooter he was riding on with his mother and was struck by a car.

Bird and Lime are taking steps to try to make scooters safer. After observing that scooter-related fatalities often occur after midnight when riders may have been drinking, Bird ceased operations after midnight. Lime halts rentals overnight in some markets but in most its scooters are available all night.

Lime has also been updating the design of its scooters, with a broader wheel base and better suspension and braking; Bird is including more durable brakes and reinforced hardware to prevent failures.

Both companies have been pushing cities for more bike lanes and better infrastructure as their riders navigate roads and traffic under conditions that were designed for cars and trucks.

A cop telling a man on a scooter to move off of the street.
Scooter companies have been fighting to create safe spaces for their riders in cities.AP

“The reality is, cars continue to kill more people annually than any other mode of transportation,” Lime said in a statement. “We must address this issue together with cities, get people out of their vehicles, and build cities that put people first, with smarter infrastructure to protect riders.”

For Howerton, his first experience with a scooter left him scarred. Even though he read the warning not to ride downhill, he did it anyway since hills are hard to avoid in Austin. When he tried to brake, he flew off the scooter and hit his head on the pavement, blood gushing into his eyes.

“These companies, for the large part, they show up in cities and they just kind of dump these rideshare devices,” Howerton said. “They tout them as this really cool, innovative, public transportation thing that’s cheap and affordable and yeah it is, but they’re dangerous and they don’t think about the potential health consequences.”

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