
Show HN: PickHealthInsurance.com - gurgeous
http://www.pickhealthinsurance.com
======
tptacek
This is very pretty and I'm sure it's to some extent useful.

However, I also find it misleading. As someone who has been through the
process of buying private insurance before: there are a number of sites like
this (though none of them as elegant and spare). All of them will give you
comparative rate charts. But those rates don't mean anything.

After you select a provider, you have to fill out their application, which is
onerous. They then do whatever record pulling they do in their backend and
come back to you with an answer, which you can expect to take the form of "we
can insure two of you for $JACKED_RATE, and we can't insure the other two at
all", at which point you get to spend weeks in their appeals process figuring
out which 15 minute doctor visit from 4 years ago put your wife or daughter on
a "do-not-cover" list.

I'm not just complaining about the (horrible) US insurance system here. I'm
saying that sites like this don't work. No web developer has access to the
real information this app purports to have, which is "what can I expect to pay
for coverage from providers in my area".

Note also that there are plenty of agents who will do this kind of legwork for
you; they're often compensated by affiliate fees from insurers.

(For what it's worth, the identical problem exists with comparative car
insurance shopping; you can get rate charts all over the Internet, but it's
not until you fill out the application for a specific provider _and_ wait a
week that you'll find out how much higher _your_ rate is than the advertised
minimum.)

What would be _very_ valuable would be a crowdsourced version of these charts.

~~~
encoderer
To offer a different perspective... I'm younger than you, and was shopping for
individual insurance.

In my case, the hardest part was trying to compare plans from the companies in
my area. All of them have slightly different ways of making it profitable for
them. One could have Rx copays, but a special deductible for ER and urgent
care visits. Another company may have only Rx reimbursement and office visit
copays. So on and so forth. I actually had a spreadsheet with about a dozen
columns to try to figure out, based on how I've used healthcare in the last
few years, what plan is likely to be best for me.

Anything to simplify it would be great.

Moreover, the companies I've worked with on this, Blue Cross of Florida and
United Healthcare (GoldenRule), in my own experience, the rates they quoted me
online after filling out their survey were correct.

Healthcare costs and complexity surely go up as we all get older, so that,
plus difference in state laws, probably explain the differences in value we
see in this app.

~~~
tptacek
I'm 34 now, but my last tussle with private insurance happened when I was 28.

Did you fill out complete applications for Blue Cross and United? Were you
presented with a sign-on-the-dotted-line contract with a rate on it?

Were you applying solely for yourself?

Again, if you're in your 20s, healthy, male, and alone, you are very easy to
insure, because you cost epsilon for Blue Cross to insure.

~~~
encoderer
Yeah, I'm currently insured by United and was previously insured by Blue
Cross.

I think your point is correct that the site is a (now cliched?) "leaky
abstraction." But the good news is that it works for at least some segment of
the market (those like myself).

I was 25 when I did the Blue Cross app and 27 when I did United.

------
gurgeous
I'm releasing the first version of PickHealthInsurance today. It helps you
compare health insurance plans (individual, not group) in the US.

I put this together over a few weekends. My COBRA is about to run out and I
found it exceptionally difficult to compare plans and prices with the existing
sites. This is the third time I've had to buy individual insurance and I
finally decided to do something about it.

Things crystallized for me when I almost bought a plan that claimed to cover
maternity, only to discover late in the game that it had a separate $20,000
maternity deductible! What a mess!

I have a few goals with PickHealthInsurance:

\- start showing approximate rates almost immediately, don't pester me with a
bunch of questions

\- explain confusing terms like "coinsurance" and point out the difference
between a PPO and a POS.

\- show plan stats up front, not buried deep within the bowels of the
application process

\- make it easy to use and blazingly fast

Built with:

\- Rails 3.1 (HAML, Sass, Coffeescript)

\- Twitter Bootstrap CSS

\- Deployed on Heroku/MongoHQ

What do you think?

~~~
charliepark
This looks fantastic. Seriously, really good.

I'd love to be able to specify the number of children I'd be putting on my
plan (maybe not on that first page, but on an internal "refine" page?).

Also, it'd be great to have checkboxes allowing me to select two or three
plans, to then compare them head-to-head.

But, again, this is an excellent first version. I look forward to seeing where
it goes.

~~~
lftl
I suppose some states may have different regulations effecting the system, but
every plan I've ever seen doesn't differentiate based on the number of
dependents you have. Rates are effectively tiered to single, married, or
family.

~~~
noahnoahnoah
This varies significantly from state-to-state, by insurer, and even by plan.
In places that do price based on actually composition for family plans,
there's rarely a particularly linear correlation between family size and
rates. (Also, good luck getting an insurer to tell you your actual rate on an
online tool :/)

------
MatthewB
Cool site, needs some visual work but the idea is there.

I have the same question as other people - how are you pulling this data?

One thing you definitely need on the front page is gender selection. Gender
instantly changes the price of insurance significantly and is a simple binary
question.

I hate dealing with health insurance so much so I very much hope this site
evolves and becomes a success for you. Well done.

Edit: Now you need to monetize this. The obvious way to do that is to do lead
gen if they offer it.

~~~
pbreit
I'm curious what "visual work" you feel is necessary? I quite like the simple
and clear visual design and wish more web sites would do the same.

------
fludlight
Very cool. I wish I had this when shopping for insurance a year ago.

A "total annual cost" column would be helpful for making sense of the
deductible/premium/co-pay relationship. Think of it as the
"Price+Shipping+Tax" on shopping websites.

Ask the user how much he expects his doctors to charge him ("Annual Medical
Bill") in the next twelve months, then calculate how much he would pay to the
doctors and to the insurance company. Last time I bought health insurance I
had to make a spreadsheet to calculate this. I would rather not repeat that
mundane task again.

It might also be useful to have multiple predefined Annual Med Bills ($0,
$1,000, $5,000, $20,000, etc). Displaying the output on a graph might make
sense (AnnMedBill vs TotalAnnCost, with a curve for each plan). You should
customize these to the user's age (a 23 year old may not go to the doctor for
years at a time, but even a healthy 50yo will definitely go several times per
year for checkups and *oscopies).

Mapping costs to life events (no doctor visits, a few visits, broken arm,
healthy pregnancy, etc) would make it even more useful, but researching the
necessary assumptions will take considerable work so just implement predefined
dollar amounts as a version 1.

Keep up the good work, this idea has value!

~~~
gurgeous
I've toyed with adding some elaborate calculators. Last time I went through
this exercise I built a rube-goldberg spreadsheet that let me plug in doctor's
visits, major illness, deductible, premium, etc. and spat out a yearly number.

It was just too complicated, though. Most people don't even understand what
"coinsurance" is. I might add some pretty calculators later if the site gets
some traffic.

~~~
fludlight
>> Most people don't even understand what "coinsurance" is.

That's exactly why you should add a calculator, so people can see how the
variables interact.

------
bartman
Great site, I especially like the explanations for the different terms.

How did you get all the insurance rates and terms, just from the companies'
sites?

When I tried evaluating the health care plans my company offered me a few
month ago I had a terribly hard time getting information about the different
plans that are out there. (But then again, I'm not from the US and the whole
health care system keeps confusing me.)

------
danielparks
Very nice. I just went through the process of picking a health insurance plan
using ehealthinsurance.com, and it was a bit of a pain.

The one thing that would have made things a lot easier for me is being able to
sort by out-of-pocket maximum. I wanted a high-deductible, HSA-compatible
plan, and so having a low out of pocket maximum was my number one criteria.

I wonder how many people actually know what they want in a health insurance
plan? There are a huge number of options, and it's hard to know what's
important. The guidance I found on the web tended to be generic, rather than
targeted at the type of plan I wanted (major medical).

Perhaps you could outline a few broad plan types, explain the advantages, and
allow users to pick one?

For example, I would have picked a "major medical plan", and it would have
shown me plans that have solid out-of-pocket maximums that aren't much higher
than the deductible. The data displayed for each plan would highlight
differences between those plans (e.g. HSA-eligible) that might not be so
important to a another plan type (e.g. full service plans).

------
randomguy33
The rates your app returned were vastly different than running the same rate
on numerous carrier websites. Your site showed rates that were sometimes less
than half what the carrier site reported.

How do you generate your rates? Your math seems dangerously wrong in a lot of
places, especially when requesting family rates.

(This is verifiable by running a rate on this website, and then going to one
of the carriers websites and generating the same quote)

Disclaimer: I work in the health insurance industry, so many of these rates
were obviously wrong as soon as I saw them.

~~~
runako
>> Disclaimer: I work in the health insurance industry...

Recommendation: Get your employer to build _this_ and not the stuff that's on
most health insurance sites. Note especially that you don't have to enter your
name or email to get a rate and plan information. Kudos to you if your company
has already done this!

~~~
tptacek
Just know that without considerably more information than your name, you're
not getting a real rate anyways.

~~~
runako
Obviously. But even after submitting a completed application, I still don't
have a real rate until the carrier completes underwriting/medical records
check etc. We're talking about the first 10 minutes of the process here.

------
cedsav
Looks great, but returns 0 plan that includes maternity coverage in my area. I
don't know if it's an issue with the app, or just the sad state of health
insurance in the US... probably a bit of both.

~~~
megamark16
I found 6 plans with maternity coverage in my area (Kansas City). I'm sure
they all have 2 year waiting periods, but that's not gurgeous' fault :-)

------
parfe
Looks like your price sorting is by string and not integer so $1,491 (most
expensive) then $199 (least expensive) were the top two results after sorting.

~~~
BrandonM
Also, it would be nice if you could use stable sort (see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_sort#Stability>). This would allow to
sort first by premium, then by deductible, then by insurance. This would allow
me to see the $0/0% plans by increasing price.

------
cHalgan
Excellent site.

On general note, this site really emphasizes how fucked up is health system in
US. There is complete lack of correlation how much a plan costs and how much
benefits you get.

There should be version: WhyHealthInsuranceinUSSucks.com

~~~
_delirium
In part that's because, unfortunately, there is not that great a correlation
between these advertised rates and how much they'll charge you once you
actually go through the application process and have them pull your medical
records, either.

------
5teev
Could you have the insurance companies' names in plain text? I could not
locate "Aetna" using my browser's Find… function, but instead had to scan the
"Company" column. I appreciate that it's sortable, but I might want to sort by
price, then jump to each row using "Find Again" to see the variety offered by
a particular company.

------
jessevondoom
This is incredibly helpful. I run a small OSS/music nonprofit and as you'd
imagine there's not a lot of money in that. Having just gone through the
process of looking around for insurance for my family I can say that is was an
amazing contrast to the overwhelming and unpleasant experience of using
insurance provider sites.

I'm notoriously cheap, but would happily shell out a commission or even a one
time fee for the service — keep it this simple and straightforward and you'll
not only have a compelling business but a tool that really helps people.

------
rmason
Great idea! But you need at a minimum to add one more question: desired
deductible.

I ended up with 79 plans and that is a bit much to sort through. Perhaps you
could have a slider on the results that let you manually set the minimum
deductible.

Also I assume the charge listed was monthly but you didn't state that.

------
rokhayakebe
I hope this is your full time gig. Picking a health insurance is one of the
hardest problems ever. I do not know the business and I fear I am going to get
screwed.

If I had launched such a nice service I would try to charge the end user. I
would be willing to pay money to an independent third party.

------
stcorbett
Have you used an agent before? Their whole business is about helping
individuals and businesses pick plans. My agent has shown me some good data
sheets that get close to giving you apples to apples comparisons. I bet you
could borrow a lot from their business models.

------
dmillar
Very interesting. Where is your data coming from?

------
stcorbett
It would be cool if I could see my existing plan on there and be able to
compare apples to apples. They keep raising my premium, it would be nice to
know if there was something else out there that had a lower premium.

------
Sindrome
I work for a company that makes millions a year providing health care plan
comparison sites to major plan carriers.

I hate it because the industry is years behind. 90% of our clients demand IE6
support because their companies still use them. We constantly have to
integrate with legacy systems and people don't understand how to consume our
web services. It's very stable, but boring.... It's a bad place.

Nice to see competent tech people getting into the market. I wouldn't mind
starting/joining a health startup but I signed a pretty damning non-compete.

------
rglover
Considering I'm currently without health insurance, this is extremely helpful.
Love how simple the interface is and how it gives you an easy to understand
list of providers. Excellent work.

------
ricksta
Is there a theme or framework that you used to make this site? It has the
exact same UI as <https://www.bitcoinica.com/>

~~~
gurgeous
Twitter Bootstrap - highly recommended!

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
<http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/> for anyone who hasn't heard of it. It
looks fantastic, and now I want to rewrite my current pet project templates to
use this instead of what I already have...

------
patja
It gives me an inaccurate rate and just sends me to ehealthinsurance.com where
they ask for just a tiny bit more info (ages of all enrollees) and gives me a
different, more accurate rate. So why do I go to pickhealthinsurance.com
again? All it does is give a wrong answer and refer me to a competitor (at
least I am perceiving you as trying to compete with the likes of
ehealthinsurance.com) who gives me a correct answer.

------
AlexC04
Under "Plan Types" you've used a checkbox when the actual behavior is a radio
button.

Plan Types HMO (15) PPO (79)

What was the reasoning behind that? Are there other options that aren't
mutually exclusive that sometimes show up dynamically? Was it a visual choice?

The checkboxes underneath act like checkboxes.

If it's a visual choice, why not use some actual style?
<http://jqueryui.com/themeroller/> (see "buttons")

------
jkeel
Nice work and very useful! It's great to see the Twitter Bootstrap CSS being
used as well. I've been using it as a starting point for my projects now.

Maybe a next step would be for users to be able to save their plan name/type
and then they can come back for comparisons. If you do that they maybe allow
people to opt in for emails if a similar plan comes up as their saved plan but
has a lower cost. Keep up the good work.

------
waterside81
As a software developer, I love this. You're doing exactly what this era of
cheap technology has enabled us to do - aggregate information into a one easy
to read, easy to understand interface. As others have mentioned, there's some
fixes here & there, but you're definitely going down the right path.

As a Canadian, I'm bewildered that this has to even exist.

------
ComputerGuru
Your site lists the same companies as every other site out there - the problem
is, it's missing so many other companies out there. It's basically a list of
the same four or five companies over and over and over again with different
plans.

Where are all my local companies? Where's BlueCross BlueShield?

------
aklemm
Someone mentioned the Mass. HealthConnecter. Here is another established tool
the developer should know about:
<https://calpers2011.chooser2.pbgh.org/Default.aspx>

PickHealthInsurance looks nice and clean. Good job!

------
lleger
Well, for one, we're Parishes in Louisiana, not Counties, but that's mostly a
pedantic thing.

There's another site that I've seen that does something similar:
<http://www.prodigyhealthinsurance.com/>

------
ffffruit
Had some long discussions with colleagues about this and it just makes you
wonder how "sophisticated" the algorithms behind health insurers are when the
basic inputs are: postcode, smoker, age and gender.

------
faramarz
Can't you claim a commission much like how brokers work? ..and if so, I wonder
how you would do that.

or,

just become broker yourself and keep the leads, then pass them off to the
Insurance company with leveraged commissions.

Very cool site.

------
Robin_Message
Sorting by price sorts alphabetically, not numerically.

I put in some details from when I was living in the US and I'm shocked—I can't
find a plan that isn't 50% copay on brand name drugs?

------
chadkeck
Very nice! Your sorting by deductible doesn't work correctly.

------
golfstrom
HHS operates a really good site to find public and private insurance options:

<http://finder.healthcare.gov/>

------
SeanLuke
A really important factor is reputation. Some of the firms you have listed at
the top of the list for me are cheap but have jet-black records.

------
amritsharma
I like what you've done with it so far!! I love your launch page UI, it's very
clear and obvious what I am supposed to do. Good luck!

------
natbro
sweet! serendipitously just what i need this week picking insurance and all
the information more quickly and better organized than sites like
ehealthinsurance.com et al. wants:

\- side-by-side comparison (check several, show all)

\- easy print-out of plans and side-by-sides, or PDF-gen

\- tool-tips for filters at left. nice tool-tips on terms in rows already

\- filter by deductible, co-pay, premium amnts (eg <$500)?

------
chollida1
I've either broke it with my postal code or this website isn't supported in
Canada. I'm guessing it's the latter.

------
marquis
This is timely - we were just looking for this an hour ago and wondering why
it didn't exist! Thanks HN.

------
ck2
FYI your stylesheet is being served with html at the end (an error page) which
is causing it to fail.

------
jeiting
Great work, this is a great piece of tech that does some real good. Keep up
the work!

------
pbreit
Nit: the sort by premium should be a numeric sort so that 1,000 is greater
than 999.

------
savrajsingh
Great job, much easier than ehealthisurance.com when I used it a couple years
ago.

------
orblivion
I don't see BCBS in my results, and I have a BCBS plan.

------
gdhillon
Looks great, Clean UI and fast. Give option to compare plans side by side.

------
Hisoka
Everyone seems to comment on how great the UI looks, but it means nothing
ultimately if the data is inaccurate.

