Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America Highlight

Horizon Blue Cross was the poster child for local health insurance cartels—it dominated the state of New Jersey, operating like a Mafia gang that insisted on its protection money, and it was a dangerous thing for any hospital to buck its power. In this case, Bayonne’s decision to drop out of the network inspired a serious reprisal: the insurer drowned Bayonne in paper and denials. It denied repayment in one case involving a patient who had come in to the hospital and received IV antibiotics; the grounds were that the patient had been a nurse twenty years earlier and should have been able to administer that care herself, in her own home. “I guess if your father’s a surgeon and your mother’s an anesthesiologist, lie down on the kitchen table and get your heart fixed there,” Kane quipped.