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Show HN: PickHealthInsurance.com

232 点作者 gurgeous超过 13 年前

44 条评论

tptacek超过 13 年前
This is very pretty and I'm sure it's to some extent useful.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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".<p>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.<p>(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 <i>and</i> wait a week that you'll find out how much higher <i>your</i> rate is than the advertised minimum.)<p>What would be <i>very</i> valuable would be a crowdsourced version of these charts.
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gurgeous超过 13 年前
I'm releasing the first version of PickHealthInsurance today. It helps you compare health insurance plans (individual, not group) in the US.<p>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.<p>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!<p>I have a few goals with PickHealthInsurance:<p>- start showing approximate rates almost immediately, don't pester me with a bunch of questions<p>- explain confusing terms like "coinsurance" and point out the difference between a PPO and a POS.<p>- show plan stats up front, not buried deep within the bowels of the application process<p>- make it easy to use and blazingly fast<p>Built with:<p>- Rails 3.1 (HAML, Sass, Coffeescript)<p>- Twitter Bootstrap CSS<p>- Deployed on Heroku/MongoHQ<p>What do you think?
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MatthewB超过 13 年前
Cool site, needs some visual work but the idea is there.<p>I have the same question as other people - how are you pulling this data?<p>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.<p>I hate dealing with health insurance so much so I very much hope this site evolves and becomes a success for you. Well done.<p>Edit: Now you need to monetize this. The obvious way to do that is to do lead gen if they offer it.
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fludlight超过 13 年前
Very cool. I wish I had this when shopping for insurance a year ago.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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).<p>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.<p>Keep up the good work, this idea has value!
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bartman超过 13 年前
Great site, I especially like the explanations for the different terms.<p>How did you get all the insurance rates and terms, just from the companies' sites?<p>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超过 13 年前
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.<p>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.<p>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).<p>Perhaps you could outline a few broad plan types, explain the advantages, and allow users to pick one?<p>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超过 13 年前
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.<p>How do you generate your rates? Your math seems dangerously wrong in a lot of places, especially when requesting family rates.<p>(This is verifiable by running a rate on this website, and then going to one of the carriers websites and generating the same quote)<p>Disclaimer: I work in the health insurance industry, so many of these rates were obviously wrong as soon as I saw them.
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cedsav超过 13 年前
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.
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parfe超过 13 年前
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.
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cHalgan超过 13 年前
Excellent site.<p>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.<p>There should be version: WhyHealthInsuranceinUSSucks.com
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5teev超过 13 年前
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超过 13 年前
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.<p>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超过 13 年前
Great idea! But you need at a minimum to add one more question: desired deductible.<p>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.<p>Also I assume the charge listed was monthly but you didn't state that.
rokhayakebe超过 13 年前
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.<p>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超过 13 年前
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超过 13 年前
Very interesting. Where is your data coming from?
stcorbett超过 13 年前
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超过 13 年前
I work for a company that makes millions a year providing health care plan comparison sites to major plan carriers.<p>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.<p>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超过 13 年前
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超过 13 年前
Is there a theme or framework that you used to make this site? It has the exact same UI as <a href="https://www.bitcoinica.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bitcoinica.com/</a>
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patja超过 13 年前
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超过 13 年前
Under "Plan Types" you've used a checkbox when the actual behavior is a radio button.<p>Plan Types HMO (15) PPO (79)<p>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?<p>The checkboxes underneath act like checkboxes.<p>If it's a visual choice, why not use some actual style? <a href="http://jqueryui.com/themeroller/" rel="nofollow">http://jqueryui.com/themeroller/</a> (see "buttons")
jkeel超过 13 年前
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.<p>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超过 13 年前
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 &#38; there, but you're definitely going down the right path.<p>As a Canadian, I'm bewildered that this has to even exist.
ComputerGuru超过 13 年前
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.<p>Where are all my local companies? Where's BlueCross BlueShield?
aklemm超过 13 年前
Someone mentioned the Mass. HealthConnecter. Here is another established tool the developer should know about: <a href="https://calpers2011.chooser2.pbgh.org/Default.aspx" rel="nofollow">https://calpers2011.chooser2.pbgh.org/Default.aspx</a><p>PickHealthInsurance looks nice and clean. Good job!
lleger超过 13 年前
Well, for one, we're Parishes in Louisiana, not Counties, but that's mostly a pedantic thing.<p>There's another site that I've seen that does something similar: <a href="http://www.prodigyhealthinsurance.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.prodigyhealthinsurance.com/</a>
ffffruit超过 13 年前
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超过 13 年前
Can't you claim a commission much like how brokers work? ..and if so, I wonder how you would do that.<p>or,<p>just become broker yourself and keep the leads, then pass them off to the Insurance company with leveraged commissions.<p>Very cool site.
Robin_Message超过 13 年前
Sorting by price sorts alphabetically, not numerically.<p>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超过 13 年前
Very nice! Your sorting by deductible doesn't work correctly.
golfstrom超过 13 年前
HHS operates a really good site to find public and private insurance options:<p><a href="http://finder.healthcare.gov/" rel="nofollow">http://finder.healthcare.gov/</a>
SeanLuke超过 13 年前
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超过 13 年前
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超过 13 年前
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:<p>- side-by-side comparison (check several, show all)<p>- easy print-out of plans and side-by-sides, or PDF-gen<p>- tool-tips for filters at left. nice tool-tips on terms in rows already<p>- filter by deductible, co-pay, premium amnts (eg &#60;$500)?
chollida1超过 13 年前
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超过 13 年前
This is timely - we were just looking for this an hour ago and wondering why it didn't exist! Thanks HN.
ck2超过 13 年前
FYI your stylesheet is being served with html at the end (an error page) which is causing it to fail.
jeiting超过 13 年前
Great work, this is a great piece of tech that does some real good. Keep up the work!
pbreit超过 13 年前
Nit: the sort by premium should be a numeric sort so that 1,000 is greater than 999.
savrajsingh超过 13 年前
Great job, much easier than ehealthisurance.com when I used it a couple years ago.
orblivion超过 13 年前
I don't see BCBS in my results, and I have a BCBS plan.
gdhillon超过 13 年前
Looks great, Clean UI and fast. Give option to compare plans side by side.
Hisoka超过 13 年前
Everyone seems to comment on how great the UI looks, but it means nothing ultimately if the data is inaccurate.