
HealthSherpa (YC S12) has processed more than 3% of healthcare.gov enrollments - georgek
http://blog.healthsherpa.com/3-percent
======
zaroth
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/m...](http://www.nytimes.com/news/affordable-care-
act/2014/03/06/more-than-one-way-to-buy-a-plan/?_r=0)

[2] -
[https://www.healthsherpa.com/agents/features](https://www.healthsherpa.com/agents/features)

~~~
nliang86
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
Just out of curiosity, did you drive this massive growth through tons of paid
advertising, or some in some organic/viral way?

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andrewchilds
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
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.

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chime
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
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.

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atrus
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
Me too. It's an incorrectly written link, as it doesn't include a protocol.

~~~
nliang86
Just fixed! Thanks for pointing it out.

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medius
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
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!

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csandstedt
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
I believe it is only the UX...As far as I can see.

~~~
themoonbus
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.

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foolinaround
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?

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

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pron
Wow! Way to go!

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danielayele
Congrats guys!

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luftderfreiheit
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
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
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
> 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.

~~~
hga
" _when it 's done even despite the objections of the ethnic group in
question_"

I thought I addressed that with part you omitted quoting, " _although there
are of course the inevitable malcontents._ "

Who speaks for these people? Have they ever submitted these sorts of questions
to a vote?

As long as e.g. there's a reasonable number of Apache tribes-members who are
proud our biggest, baddest, proven in combat attack helicopter is named after
them, I don't give a [expletive deleted] about the malcontents, most
especially including the SJW crowd.

And if Sherpa has mutated into simply "guide", that's also addressed, in my "I
can't speak for post-70s" qualification. Given your closeness to that
situation, are _all_ or even _most_ of the "Sherpas" upset with all the
connotations the word had accumulated in English over the decades? If you
claim the latter, how do you know?

