Prof. Daniel Schwarcz Interviewed in USA Today about Health Insurance Companies’ Exclusions for War & Insurrection

Prof. Daniel Schwarcz was interviewed in a USA Today article fact checking whether health insurance companies recently changed their exclusions for war and insurrection because they’ve been tipped off to expected widespread violence. Various social media posts made the claims but these were determined by the article as false. Excluding such events is neither new nor uncommon for health insurance companies, and according to Professor Schwarcz, health insurers had similar language in their policies before 2024. He said that whatever an insurance company decides to include or exclude from its coverage is based on an economic calculation. The suggestion that those decisions were made in 2024 because companies had knowledge of events to come is “preposterous,” he said. “Insurers universally attempt to limit their coverage for large, correlated risks that are plausible – that’s what’s going on here,” he said. “It’s not nefarious. It’s not like health insurers have any different information than the rest of us.”