The Health Insurance Concierge
EP. 04
You know you're a crazy dog parent when your dog has health insurance and you don't. So I'm currently in between employment types and have a gap in my insurance coverage.
Instead of just choosing the cheapest plan like a normal human being, I built an app.
You may or may not know this about me, but I have a degree in publich heatlh. And my biggest frustration is that healthcare in the U.S. is designed to be intimidating. Big scary words, complicated math, and everything is hidden in fine print. Insurance conmpanies profit off this confusion.
This literally keeps me up at night. I've spent hours helping friends and family pick plans because I can't stand watching people get screwed over.
Most people just pick whatever has the cheapest monthly premium. But sometimes you'd actually save money with a higher premium plan because your overall costs throughout the year are lower. The math matters, but no one shows you how to do the math. I built an app to do the math for you.
The app starts out by taking in basic demographic information, and then it prompts questions to understand how you used health care last year.
On the backend, I uploaded 3 different types of insurance and their benefits information. This is typically 10-20 pages worth of PDF’s and you have to sift through all the fine printing to understand how the plan would work for your needs.
I built a calculator to compare how much each plan costs over the year based on your health care needs. It gives you recommendations based on how you would like to use your insurance. You can also play around with the calculator to see how the expenses change if you have a procedure that you know of coming up, or you want to add extra buffer for a rainy day.
If you’ve been struggling with health insurance plans, check out the demo. What should I build next?