I recently joined a company by the name hCentive Inc, which is creating a health insurance exchange for US, where people could logon and buy affordable health insurance. After spending some time on understanding the US health insurance system, I realized that consumers need someone who could explain to them the policies they were buying. Leave apart the basic insurance details, even the process of comparison and selection is difficult as a single search on few of the health insurance portals in the US, gives back hundreds of policies to choose from. Until someone himself works in the same domain, I bet it must not be easy to purchase the right insurance.
We are lucky here in India to just understand premium and deductible. People in the US have to comprehend a whole bunch of insurance jargon, like co-insurance, co-pay, out-of-pocket maximum, to name just a few. And then, there are HMOs, PPOs, HSAs
Well, leaving the details of these acronyms for a later post, hCentive is in an exciting space. If the crack team @hcentive can collectively solve this problem for the end user, of choosing the right insurance, we can make a lot of difference to the life, health and pockets of people around, apart from making a mark for ourselves.
We are doing some really exciting stuff. If you happen to read it, and get interested, drop me an email and we can get talking.
US health insurance is complicated, and in India it is going to become more and complicated in coming times.
Reading this post it feels that policy recommendation should be simple if you can have other person answer all your right and precise questions. But i believe the bigger challenge shall be explaining to the end user that what u r recommending is the best….
@Ankur, well said. That is why I have not seen *any* site attempting to give recommendations just yet. I search through major US health insurance exchanges throws up over 500 plans based on user’s query.
However, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention. Now that there are more businesses (online portals, comparison shopping, exchanges) entering the health insurance space in the US, it will become important for all of them to differentiate. And when it comes to speed and agility, the new comers will have an edge
US health care system is almost close to a professional crime Syndicate….i guess Hcentive should satrt with forums and article where people can collaborate on knowing what they are buying and what should they actually be buying…..anyone who uses technology to faciliate a better product for customer will have an edge. Live chat is a good toll implemented