Clover Health isn’t a Tech Company

Clover Health is making headlines once again for “losing money on its average customer,” CNBC reports. Here’s the gist of what went down. Peeps signed up for Clover Health in 2015. As can be expected, some required lab tests, which are typically covered by one’s health insurer – that’s Clover. Except Clover decided to play clever and required lab testing providers to provide patient data so that it can continue to be “data-driven”. Long story short, labs didn’t provide Clover with data, Clover didn’t honor the claims and policyholders were caught in the middle – being asked by the labs to pay their bill. When policyholders got mad, Clover paid the bills and did something even more clever – “it negotiated in-network contracts and data-sharing deals with both Quest and LabCorp by the end of 2015.” To make matters worse, Clover Health, which employs over 370 workers and has raised $425M since inception, also missed a few milestones including not growing fast enough. Its membership grew from 20,000 in 2016 to ~27,000 by Sep. 2017, although it predicted it would reach 65,000 members by year end.
Op-Ed: Clover is not a tech company.