Finding the right insurance plan is tough enough when you have to sort through the options provided by your employer. But what if you’re choosing from the public option (also known as “Obamacare”)? The bureaucratic process that awaits you can be daunting, but a new service has launched which seeks to not only find you a personalized healthcare plan, but get you signed up in just minutes.
Cofounder Grace Gee calls HoneyInsured the "Hipmunk for insurance," and stresses how streamlined the process can be. All you have to do is answer four one-click questions, such as your physician’s name, how much you spend on medical care, your doctor’s network, and your risk preferences.
The power behind HoneyInsured’s “magic” is an algorithm that crunches through data contained within the Healthcare.gov website. Gee told VentureBeat that the Y Combinator Fellowship company can tap into different plans on the site and scan the licensed data sets of provider directories and network sizes. With that information, HoneyInsured can analyze each option to find the ones that fit a user's needs.
In order to gain access to Healthcare.gov’s data, HoneyInsured has been certified by the U.S. government, which means the company has been vetted in terms of its infrastructure and other aspects of the organization.
Started by Harvard alumni Gee and Eugene Wang, the company aims to solve a problem the two encountered after graduating: finding a workable healthcare plan. The service they came up with was previously available by invite-only and the company has had 50 people actively testing its service leading up to the launch. HoneyInsured hopes to appeal to the uninsured, specifically those don’t understand how the insurance system works and former students like Gee and Wang who are no longer covered by their parents’ insurance.
HoneyInsured's selling point isn’t just its combination of personalization and Big Data, it’s the simplicity of its user-experience. The startup promises to explain the benefits you will receive in simple terms, while also responding to basic queries such as “How much would I pay if I got a bad flu?” The service will also provide an interactive 2D chart to help you compare multiple plans side-by-side.
HoneyInsured says that it receives a commission on the plans that people buy through its service.
Residents of Texas, Florida Virginia, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina can now take advantage of this service. Gee said that these states were chosen because each one has a large enrollment in the federal marketplace. The federal exchanges are more open for HoneyInsured, as they’re easier to integrate with.