
Cake Health Wants To Be The ‘Mint For Health Insurance’ (Beta Invites) - jedwhite
http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/13/cake-health-wants-to-be-the-mint-for-health-insurance-beta-invites/
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MJR
Banks have spreadsheet level account information - debits, credits, categories
and labels. Not a very broad set of information to parse. Most banks offered
several common formats for this data and it was readily available online -
albeit with some caveats. Health insurance on the other hand is nothing like
that.

For example - Showing a BCBS logo is hardly representative of the 39 separate
companies which are part of the BCBS Association. Good luck trying to wrangle
connecting to each of these companies and then trying to decipher the
individual plan-level benefits of thousands of customized plans at each
specific insurer. Employer's routinely customize benefits for their employee
offered plans. These benefits are detailed in your benefit booklet or member
guide which you probably get by mail and maybe have access to in a PDF online.
Parsing and then reporting on that info is a tall order and that's if you can
even get access to it.

This is in addition to the legal hoops that you'll have to jump through to
even explore the ramifications of transferring PHI(Personal Health
Information) from insurers and storing it elsewhere. Once explored you have to
get permission to acquire this information - another difficult hurdle if its
even possible.

TLDR - They're in for a long climb up a very steep hill.

~~~
andrewpbrett
This is a great point, and something we're definitely aware of. The short
story is that we think it's worth the trouble to build something that provides
this for the end user, and we've made some significant progress on that path
already. As a shameless plug, if you're interested in helping us get there,
we're hiring: cakehealth.com/jobs

~~~
MJR
Oh yeah - and I forgot to mention state health exchanges coming in 2014.

One question I'm really curious about - how do you plan to make money? Are you
going to try to achieve agent/broker status? Sell ads to different insurers?
Or just wait and see?

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kevin_morrill
This is a space ripe for innovation. There is such a lack of transparency in
healthcare pricing and what your insurer--if you have one--will actually cover
on your behalf.

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karzeem
Anything that makes it easier for people to buy their own health insurance is
a good thing. There's something about employers buying products for employees
that makes those products tend towards crappiness (cf. enterprise software).

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18pfsmt
I have been to the doctor 2 times in 20 years, and managing something like
this just seems like an unnecessary pain. I have catastrophic with a high
deductible, and I don't care to even bother with the topic unless mandatory.
This just isn't like managing one's finances.

Edit: To be clear, I manage the finances of 22 subcontractors and 3 general
contractors. It's a very big deal. I don't manage their healthcare at all.
Much like Microsoft's strategy in mobile, healthcare needs to be as
maintenance free as possible.

~~~
rayiner
Any family with kids is going to be in to the doctor many times per year. They
need immunizations, they break bones, they get cavities that need to be
filled, etc. Then as you get old, you're on heart medication, hyper tension
medication, etc.

I'm a generally healthy 27 year old, and in the last two years I've had to get
cavities filled, catch up on some immunizations required by my graduate
school, get my contact prescription updated twice, etc.

~~~
18pfsmt
I truly appreciate your response, and I realize it is quite common. However,
you'll have to forgive me if I consider you "needy" because I come from the
minimalist mindset. I once broke up with a girl I thought I might marry
because she turned out to be allergic to bees. I spend far to much time in the
back-country to be attached to someone so vulnerable. I am trying to give my
true opinion, and I don't think I've made any generalizations or poor logical
assumptions, I've just shown how idiosyncratic I am about certain topics. I
welcome opinions, and I love intelligent debate.

EDIT: Cool. Down-voting for disagreement is not supposed to be how this
works[1], but you people can't help yourselves? Grow some balls and make an
argument.

[1]<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

~~~
18pfsmt
If you are trying to be part of the HN community and add value, why can't you
state your reasons for disagreement?

~~~
18pfsmt
All I see is down votes. Does anyone have logic to explain the reasoning or
does only the fact that you disagree count?

This is not what I've come to believe the HN community is about.

P.S. The max neg number I have is -2 since you can't see the specifics.

Edit: Now (9:50 PM PST) neg 3, no logical response, however.

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ramkalari
Carriers have different systems for group and individual insurance. And they
have various constraints when they offer plans to groups. And that's what a
typical carrier's underwriting system does. It would be interesting to see how
this recommendation system would work with employer/group plans.

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keeptrying
A hard problem but yeah if you can solve it then it'll help out a lot of
people.

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18pfsmt
That's what I thought, minimal interest on HN. 8 points? Only unhealthy people
care, and they clearly have no arguments or they would make them, since it is
easy to do here on this forum.

EDIT: Nice rebuttal: down vote. You are part of the HN plague.

~~~
18pfsmt
Simply down-voting without an argument doesn't strengthen your position. It
makes you seem without argument.

