Health insurer goes out

On Thanksgiving Eve came official news of the collapse of a health insurance cooperative based in Seneca. State regulators ordered the closing of the South Carolina Health Cooperative after an analysis that the co-op could not continue without an infusion of $5 million dollars or more of additional capital. In a letter the director of the state Insurance Department, Raymond Farmer, said, “The Department took this action after being notified that two standby letters of credit that serve as security for the SCHC’s reserves were deemed to be fraudulent.” Some 46-hundred policyholders suddenly found themselves without insurance, as they sat down at the Thanksgiving dinner table.