A health insurance company founded by a man convicted of insurance-related felonies doesn’t sound like a recipe for success.
A health insurance company founded by a man convicted of insurance-related felonies doesn’t sound like a recipe for success. ·  View in browser
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A New York Focus review of lawsuits against Leading Edge show it has a record of backing out of paying for covered health procedures — and trying to leave patients with the bill. Photo: c-George / Getty Images | Illustration: Leor Stylar
Health insurer Leading Edge once tried to cancel a coma patient’s insurance and, in another case, retracted approval for surgery after the bill arrived.
By Sam Mellins

A health insurance company founded by a man convicted of insurance-related felonies doesn’t sound like a recipe for success.

But since its founding in 2010, insurer Leading Edge Administrators has flourished despite the checkered past of its founder, Jerry Weissman, who in 1997 was convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation into Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, then the nation’s largest medical insurer, where he served as CFO.

On May 1, Leading Edge will begin offering two bare-bones insurance plans to hundreds of thousands of low-wage home health aides in New York. As New York Focus previously reported, one of these plans will fail to cover many basic health needs — like doctor’s visits, maternal care, and hospitalization — for the workers who provide state-funded care to elderly and disabled people across the state.

Home health aides might have difficulty getting Leading Edge to pay for even the services it claims to cover. A New York Focus review of lawsuits against Leading Edge show it has a record of backing out of paying for covered health procedures — using tactics that experts say went far beyond standard industry practices — and trying to leave patients with the bill.

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Staying Focused is compiled and written by Alex Arriaga
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