Family Builds Empire Off ‘Christian’ Insurance; Narcolepsy Drug Patent Games

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/103329

Welcome to the latest edition of Investigative Roundup, highlighting some of the best investigative reporting on healthcare each week.

Family Builds Empire Off ‘Christian’ Insurance

Liberty HealthShare, a nonprofit known as a health care sharing ministry, billed itself as a religious alternative to Obamacare. In reality, the family running it funneled money from members into various shell companies and businesses owned by other family members, leaving medical bills unpaid and patients in debt, a ProPublica investigation foundopens in a new tab or window.

One member spent her last months begging Liberty to pay her bills that went to collections. But the company has largely escaped consequences because insurance regulators can’t investigate the nonprofit, and federal agencies haven’t acted.

Through Liberty, Daniel Beers, with family members and a colleague, helped create what ProPublica calls a “dizzying array of businesses, real estate holding companies and shell companies — entities that conduct no business but hold assets and move money,” and spend it on land, a wedding venue, a horse stable, a hunting and fishing camp, and even a vineyard.

At the same time, Liberty didn’t pay many patients’ bills: 70 members interviewed for the investigation described “extended periods of stress, harassment by bill collectors and financial ruin” over bills Liberty promised to reimburse but never did.

Health care sharing ministries work like health insurers, but have roots in Mennonite and Amish communities, pooling money from a community to send aid directly to families with medical expenses. Beers was part of an early operation that started out with a similar model, charging members a small fee to be a part of a network, which would then cover medical expenses for people in need. This eventually grew into an insurance-like business, using marketers to recruit new subscribers, and a second company to negotiate with hospitals and doctors. Eventually, medical bills went unpaid because leaders were hiding money and siphoning it to leaders and family members, ProPublica reported.

Beers started Liberty in 2014 with family and ran it the same way, contracting out services like bill negotiations to companies owned by his family members. He insisted to ProPublica he doesn’t work for Liberty. Between 2015 and 2021, Liberty recruited members and made nearly $2 billion in revenue, but didn’t report half of it to tax agencies, claiming this pool of money belonged to its members, although in reality Liberty had control of the money, the article stated.

Filed under: General Problems