From Indiana and The Center Square:
The head of Indianapolis-based insurance company OneAmerica said the
death rate is up a stunning 40% from pre-pandemic levels among
working-age people.
“We are seeing, right now, the highest death
rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at
OneAmerica,” the company’s CEO Scott Davison said during an online news
conference this week. “The data is consistent across every player in
that business.”
OneAmerica is a $100 billion insurance company
that has had its headquarters in Indianapolis since 1877. The company
has approximately 2,400 employees and sells life insurance, including
group life insurance to employers in the state.
Davison said the increase in deaths represents “huge, huge numbers,”
and that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily
working-age people 18 to 64” who are the employees of companies that
have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica.
“And what we
saw just in third quarter, we’re seeing it continue into fourth quarter,
is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic,” he
said.
“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma
or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over
pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.”
Most of the claims for deaths being filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths, Davison said.
“What
the data is showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported
as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among
working-age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID on their
death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.”
At the same news conference where Davison spoke, Brian Tabor, the
president of the Indiana Hospital Association, said that hospitals
across the state are being flooded with patients “with many different
conditions,” saying “unfortunately, the average Hoosiers’ health has
declined during the pandemic.”
In a follow-up call, he said he did
not have a breakdown showing why so many people in the state are being
hospitalized – for what conditions or ailments. But he said the
extraordinarily high death rate quoted by Davison matched what hospitals
in the state are seeing.
"What it confirmed for me is it bore out what we're seeing on the front end,..." he said.
The
number of hospitalizations in the state is now higher than before the
COVID-19 vaccine was introduced a year ago, and in fact is higher than
it’s been in the past five years, Dr. Lindsay Weaver, Indiana’s chief
medical officer, said at a news conference with Gov. Eric Holcomb on
Wednesday.
Just 8.9% of ICU beds are available at hospitals in the
state, a low for the year, and lower than at any time during the
pandemic. But the majority of ICU beds are not taken up by COVID-19
patients – just 37% are, while 54% of the ICU beds are being occupied by
people with other illnesses or conditions.