New Ventures Make Obamacare Exchanges Less Relevant Than Ever
One theme of this blog is that Obamacare exchanges make as little sense for health insurance as a DMV-operated exchange for car insurance, or a HUD-operated exchange for homeowner’s insurance. Just shut them down.
We’re not the only ones who noticed:
Looking to provide health insurance to the 53 million Americans who don’t get benefits from their employers, Stride Health has raised $13 million in new funding.
Venrock led the Series A round, with participation from Fidelity Biosciences and previous investor NEA, which brings Stride’s total venture funding to $17.5 million.
For the freelancers and independent contractors who make up one third of the U.S. labor force, Stride offers a hassle-free alternative to Healthcare.gov.
After you enter your own data, including age, gender, location, and illness history, Stride’s forecasting model evaluates how much care you’ll use throughout the year, prices it on every health plan, and couples it with the coverage price to show you the total cost of each plan. (Christine Magee, TechCrunch)
Private investors are putting their own capital at risk to launch a business to compete against a government monopoly. That shows how useless Obamacare’s exchanges are.
It sounds like an excellent way to help consumers pick plans every year
The downside could be the selection could be so specific so that different plans qualify each year exacerbating adverse selection and restricting persistency making premiums even more expensive
In addition if one predicts incorrectly he could be in the “wrong plan.”
We need coverage that provides a win-win for all parties over the short and long term without switching plans every year or every 2-3 years
Don Levit
I wonder if Stride Health can calculate government subsidies and apply them.
The subsidies are the main reason that ACA exchanges are so slow and clunky.
A lot of free lancers keep their taxable income pretty low,(or it just is low), so subsidies are important to them.
It does decide whether you get a subsidy or not. I have not gone far enough down the decision tree to see if it makes an accurate estimate of tax credits.
I thought that one had to use an ACA exchange to actually get the subsidy applied to your premium. I may be wrong.
“I thought that one had to use an ACA exchange to actually get the subsidy”
Sorta depends on the meaning of the term “ACA exchange” which sorta depends on the meaning of the word word “state”.
http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/11/court-to-rule-on-health-care-subsidies/
You are right, but the ventures are better at guiding your choice. You have already made your choice by the time you get shot into the exchange.