8 ms·

HealthSherpa (YC S12) has processed more than 3% of healthcare.gov enrollments

69 points by georgek 12y ago

atrus 12y ago
Hmm, maybe it's just me, but clicking on the HealthSherpa.com link on the sidebar leads me to http://blog.healthsherpa.com/www.healthsherpa.com http://blog.healthsherpa.com/www.healthsherpa.com and I'm assuming that it should simply go to www.healthsherpa.com
- morgante 12y ago
  Me too. It's an incorrectly written link, as it doesn't include a protocol.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - nliang86 12y ago
    Just fixed! Thanks for pointing it out.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
medius 12y ago
I tried comparing some plans, but it always gives me 500 with the very familiar red "We're sorry, but something went wrong." message. At least I know you are using Rails. And now I know in terms I can understand why healthcare is such a pain. :)
- nliang86 12y ago
  Sorry about that. Which zip code are you in? We are accepting enrollments in the 37 healthcare.gov states - FL, TX, NJ, etc. We are working on adding CA, NY and others soon. To see it all in action, try a FL zip code like 33604. Thank you for taking a look!
zaroth 12y ago
That's pretty awesome growth from the 40 signups NYT reported you had as of March last year! [1] Congratulations on the incredible break-out success. If the broker's cut is average just $100 / year (WAG) on 110,000 signups, that's ARR of $11 million. Holy shit, nicely done on $1.1m of funding. Their agent platform [2] nets just $10 per application and gives the agent the full commission, but even just $1m revenue is impressive for the funding level. Also, can we now officially stop talking about trying to fix the problem from the inside? If this doesn't show that healthcare.gov (and every single other state-exchange) should never have been built in the first place, I don't know what does. It also makes you wonder, does the Fed get that annual broker's commission when you signup fully on healthcare.gov, or do they just give it away to the insurance company? [1] - http://www.nytimes.com/news/affordable-care-act/2014/03/06/more-than-one-way-to-buy-a-plan/?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/news/affordable-care-act/2014/03/06/m... [2] - https://www.healthsherpa.com/agents/features https://www.healthsherpa.com/agents/features
- nliang86 12y ago
  It's actually a mix - we are agent of record on a sizable portion, and we process enrollments for insurance companies and agents for the remainder. Our main goal is to making signing up as easy as possible. Our currently flow is getting individuals through in about 5 minutes, and families in around 10. The revenue will allow us to build many more useful features.
  - downandout 12y ago
    Just out of curiosity, did you drive this massive growth through tons of paid advertising, or some in some organic/viral way?
- will_brown 12y ago
  >If this doesn't show that healthcare.gov (and every single other state-exchange) should never have been built in the first place, I don't know what does. I am definitely stepping out on a limb here, but I would imagine HealthSherpa uses the HealthCare.org API and would not have a product offering without Healthcare.org having laid the ground work (i.e. consolidating the insurance plans available and offering the API).
luftderfreiheit 12y ago
Not to drop the pc bomb... but isn't the name kind of racist? The Sherpa are an ethnic group, after all. HealthNegro? HealthWhitey?
- benten10 12y ago
  Haha, I got just as angry as you did, but the sentiment as you expressed is not correct. It would be more like HealthIrish, HealthPolish, HealthCatalan, etc. Having said that, the misuse of Sherpa, specially in the US, really, really really bugs me. Really really really. A lot of my friends are Sherpas, and when someone on TV misuses 'Sherpa' I just..want..to...throw things at the tv. Sigh. We gotta wait for the Sherpa-in-Chief. We got Prabal Gurung, now we need Ang Dorje Sherpa to start designing cloths.
  - hga 12y ago
    At least when I was growing up in the '60s-'70s, the connotations of Sherpa were entirely positive; Wikipedia also doesn't indicate anything bad associated with the name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherpa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherpa (well, who knows about the quality of the "psychedelic power pop band from Auckland, New Zealand" :-). A nice, helpful expert who because of nature and nurture was better suited to the extreme environment of the Himalayas, who therefore carried more stuff than the "white" with whom the two formed a team, and got serious billing along with the latter. Moderately well read people from my era give equal billing to the team of Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary who first officially conquered the summit of Mount Everest. Of course, not really following mass media since the '70s I don't know if the term has degraded since then, but at least it started from a good base. It's like the American usage of Indian tribe names for naming sports teams and Army helicopters, that's not done out of disrespect, although there are of course the inevitable malcontents.
    - chimeracoder 12y ago
      > It's like the American usage of Indian tribe names for naming sports teams and Army helicopters, that's not done out of disrespect What does it mean to say that "it's not done out of disrespect", when it's done even despite the objections of the ethnic group in question? In this particular case, I can assure you that many Sherpa people very strongly object to the use of the word "Sherpa" as a synonym for "guide", and they do indeed feel it is very disrespectful.
chime 12y ago
I wish I had heard about this site just a month ago. I used eHealthInsurance and a bunch of similar sites extensively to find my self-insured plan. Using the worst-case sort on healthsherpa, I just found a better plan than the one I'm on. Too late for me to change now but here's hoping next year I get on a better plan.
- drawkbox 12y ago
  Agreed, just did this as well. eHealthInsurance was awesome but I just ran through the same at HealthSherpa and it is an impressively smooth and minimal site. Such a nice change from usual health insurance sites. Granted eHealthInsurance I have used for a few years and it was easy as well. I like that more sites are making it simple and clear. What we also need is payment through these sites because once you are signed up, paying through Aetna / Blue Cross and others is a inception like web ring from the 90s and not consumer ready, they have been company focused for too long and reliant on mail/phone. The plan I had at Aetna a year ago, had no lie, 7 clicks to get to the payment system. It was all POST ing so you could not go direct. A few pages on others took 30-45 seconds to load. I feel like all insurance companies sites feel like they can waste everyone's time because you have to do it.
csandstedt 12y ago
What is the benefit to using your site instead of healthcare.gov? I just ran a search (I'm in Florida) and it looks like the same options I have on healthcare.gov.
- foolinaround 12y ago
  I believe it is only the UX...As far as I can see.
  - themoonbus 12y ago
    Yes, just the UX, the plans should be the same. As someone who just spent many hours trying to navigate ACA plans, HealthSherpa helped me compare plans, even though ultimately I did not buy through them.
foolinaround 12y ago
Site looks nice and simple; needs more filtering, ex, by HSA plan availability.
foolinaround 12y ago
What tech stack do you use? Did you use a business rules based solution for codifying those millions of rules, or is this DB table driven?
danielayele 12y ago
Congrats guys!
pron 12y ago
Wow! Way to go!
andrewchilds 12y ago
The problem, in NY at least, is that none of these sites account for the quality of the provider network, so you're fooled into thinking the quality of coverage just comes down to deductibles and coinsurance limits. Hopefully this works itself out over time, but right now network quality a serious problem affecting most of the plans offered on the NY state exchange. Take MetroPlus for example: their plans looks good on paper, but their network consists of overcrowded municipal hospitals. Take a look at their yelp reviews for a more realistic picture: http://www.yelp.com/biz/metroplus-health-plan-new-york http://www.yelp.com/biz/metroplus-health-plan-new-york
- will_brown 12y ago
  You addressed 1 of the 2 major issues I have with the ACA. I think the issue you raised could simply be called transparency, but as you allude there is no reason when I click on a plan in any market place, that I should not be able to see an exhaustive list of the providers who accept the given plan and a list of providers who do not, aside from premiums I would imagine this is the single most important factor to the majority of consumers, and the most important for people who are not picking plans based on finances. There are other data points insurers should be made to disclose as well, such as: the total number of claims under a given plan, the number of claims that were paid/not paid out, and the average amount of time it took to approve/pay said claims. The 2nd issue, none of these plans on the market place make healthcare affordable to those who were previously uninsured due to cost. Yes, there are subsidies for premiums, but once someone actually has to use the plan, most can not afford the out of pocket co-pay much less the deductible. Due to inability to truly afford their subsidized insurance plan, people avoid using their insurance and so all the mandate really seems to do is line the pockets of the insurers with subsidized premiums on behalf of people who knowingly will not use their plans.

69 points by georgek 12y ago

atrus 12y ago

Hmm, maybe it's just me, but clicking on the HealthSherpa.com link on the sidebar leads me to http://blog.healthsherpa.com/www.healthsherpa.com http://blog.healthsherpa.com/www.healthsherpa.com and I'm assuming that it should simply go to www.healthsherpa.com

morgante 12y ago
Me too. It's an incorrectly written link, as it doesn't include a protocol.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- nliang86 12y ago
  Just fixed! Thanks for pointing it out.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

medius 12y ago

I tried comparing some plans, but it always gives me 500 with the very familiar red "We're sorry, but something went wrong." message. At least I know you are using Rails. And now I know in terms I can understand why healthcare is such a pain. :)

nliang86 12y ago
Sorry about that. Which zip code are you in? We are accepting enrollments in the 37 healthcare.gov states - FL, TX, NJ, etc. We are working on adding CA, NY and others soon. To see it all in action, try a FL zip code like 33604. Thank you for taking a look!

zaroth 12y ago

That's pretty awesome growth from the 40 signups NYT reported you had as of March last year! [1] Congratulations on the incredible break-out success. If the broker's cut is average just $100 / year (WAG) on 110,000 signups, that's ARR of $11 million. Holy shit, nicely done on $1.1m of funding. Their agent platform [2] nets just $10 per application and gives the agent the full commission, but even just $1m revenue is impressive for the funding level. Also, can we now officially stop talking about trying to fix the problem from the inside? If this doesn't show that healthcare.gov (and every single other state-exchange) should never have been built in the first place, I don't know what does. It also makes you wonder, does the Fed get that annual broker's commission when you signup fully on healthcare.gov, or do they just give it away to the insurance company? [1] - http://www.nytimes.com/news/affordable-care-act/2014/03/06/more-than-one-way-to-buy-a-plan/?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/news/affordable-care-act/2014/03/06/m... [2] - https://www.healthsherpa.com/agents/features https://www.healthsherpa.com/agents/features

nliang86 12y ago
It's actually a mix - we are agent of record on a sizable portion, and we process enrollments for insurance companies and agents for the remainder. Our main goal is to making signing up as easy as possible. Our currently flow is getting individuals through in about 5 minutes, and families in around 10. The revenue will allow us to build many more useful features.
- downandout 12y ago
  Just out of curiosity, did you drive this massive growth through tons of paid advertising, or some in some organic/viral way?
will_brown 12y ago
>If this doesn't show that healthcare.gov (and every single other state-exchange) should never have been built in the first place, I don't know what does. I am definitely stepping out on a limb here, but I would imagine HealthSherpa uses the HealthCare.org API and would not have a product offering without Healthcare.org having laid the ground work (i.e. consolidating the insurance plans available and offering the API).

luftderfreiheit 12y ago

Not to drop the pc bomb... but isn't the name kind of racist? The Sherpa are an ethnic group, after all. HealthNegro? HealthWhitey?

benten10 12y ago
Haha, I got just as angry as you did, but the sentiment as you expressed is not correct. It would be more like HealthIrish, HealthPolish, HealthCatalan, etc. Having said that, the misuse of Sherpa, specially in the US, really, really really bugs me. Really really really. A lot of my friends are Sherpas, and when someone on TV misuses 'Sherpa' I just..want..to...throw things at the tv. Sigh. We gotta wait for the Sherpa-in-Chief. We got Prabal Gurung, now we need Ang Dorje Sherpa to start designing cloths.
- hga 12y ago
  At least when I was growing up in the '60s-'70s, the connotations of Sherpa were entirely positive; Wikipedia also doesn't indicate anything bad associated with the name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherpa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherpa (well, who knows about the quality of the "psychedelic power pop band from Auckland, New Zealand" :-). A nice, helpful expert who because of nature and nurture was better suited to the extreme environment of the Himalayas, who therefore carried more stuff than the "white" with whom the two formed a team, and got serious billing along with the latter. Moderately well read people from my era give equal billing to the team of Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary who first officially conquered the summit of Mount Everest. Of course, not really following mass media since the '70s I don't know if the term has degraded since then, but at least it started from a good base. It's like the American usage of Indian tribe names for naming sports teams and Army helicopters, that's not done out of disrespect, although there are of course the inevitable malcontents.
  - chimeracoder 12y ago
    > It's like the American usage of Indian tribe names for naming sports teams and Army helicopters, that's not done out of disrespect What does it mean to say that "it's not done out of disrespect", when it's done even despite the objections of the ethnic group in question? In this particular case, I can assure you that many Sherpa people very strongly object to the use of the word "Sherpa" as a synonym for "guide", and they do indeed feel it is very disrespectful.

chime 12y ago

I wish I had heard about this site just a month ago. I used eHealthInsurance and a bunch of similar sites extensively to find my self-insured plan. Using the worst-case sort on healthsherpa, I just found a better plan than the one I'm on. Too late for me to change now but here's hoping next year I get on a better plan.

drawkbox 12y ago
Agreed, just did this as well. eHealthInsurance was awesome but I just ran through the same at HealthSherpa and it is an impressively smooth and minimal site. Such a nice change from usual health insurance sites. Granted eHealthInsurance I have used for a few years and it was easy as well. I like that more sites are making it simple and clear. What we also need is payment through these sites because once you are signed up, paying through Aetna / Blue Cross and others is a inception like web ring from the 90s and not consumer ready, they have been company focused for too long and reliant on mail/phone. The plan I had at Aetna a year ago, had no lie, 7 clicks to get to the payment system. It was all POST ing so you could not go direct. A few pages on others took 30-45 seconds to load. I feel like all insurance companies sites feel like they can waste everyone's time because you have to do it.

csandstedt 12y ago

What is the benefit to using your site instead of healthcare.gov? I just ran a search (I'm in Florida) and it looks like the same options I have on healthcare.gov.

foolinaround 12y ago
I believe it is only the UX...As far as I can see.
- themoonbus 12y ago
  Yes, just the UX, the plans should be the same. As someone who just spent many hours trying to navigate ACA plans, HealthSherpa helped me compare plans, even though ultimately I did not buy through them.

foolinaround 12y ago

Site looks nice and simple; needs more filtering, ex, by HSA plan availability.

foolinaround 12y ago

What tech stack do you use? Did you use a business rules based solution for codifying those millions of rules, or is this DB table driven?

danielayele 12y ago

Congrats guys!

pron 12y ago

Wow! Way to go!

andrewchilds 12y ago

The problem, in NY at least, is that none of these sites account for the quality of the provider network, so you're fooled into thinking the quality of coverage just comes down to deductibles and coinsurance limits. Hopefully this works itself out over time, but right now network quality a serious problem affecting most of the plans offered on the NY state exchange. Take MetroPlus for example: their plans looks good on paper, but their network consists of overcrowded municipal hospitals. Take a look at their yelp reviews for a more realistic picture: http://www.yelp.com/biz/metroplus-health-plan-new-york http://www.yelp.com/biz/metroplus-health-plan-new-york

will_brown 12y ago
You addressed 1 of the 2 major issues I have with the ACA. I think the issue you raised could simply be called transparency, but as you allude there is no reason when I click on a plan in any market place, that I should not be able to see an exhaustive list of the providers who accept the given plan and a list of providers who do not, aside from premiums I would imagine this is the single most important factor to the majority of consumers, and the most important for people who are not picking plans based on finances. There are other data points insurers should be made to disclose as well, such as: the total number of claims under a given plan, the number of claims that were paid/not paid out, and the average amount of time it took to approve/pay said claims. The 2nd issue, none of these plans on the market place make healthcare affordable to those who were previously uninsured due to cost. Yes, there are subsidies for premiums, but once someone actually has to use the plan, most can not afford the out of pocket co-pay much less the deductible. Due to inability to truly afford their subsidized insurance plan, people avoid using their insurance and so all the mandate really seems to do is line the pockets of the insurers with subsidized premiums on behalf of people who knowingly will not use their plans.