I agree that there is room for new entrants but there are tremendous barriers to scale to the level of legacy insurers. I'll leave it at that as there's too much to unpack.
Health insurance is one of those industries where we’ve gotten so used to the complexity that we almost accept it as normal. If AI can actually lower administrative costs while giving people more choice and a better experience, this could be a much bigger shift than simply making insurance cheaper.
Here's a little known fact that gets glossed over in discussions of health insurance alternatives (other than single payer).
Employer paid health insurance has a HUGE advantage over alternative proposals because employees ARE NOT TAXED on the cost of the health insurance benefit they receive! This results in something like $6k-30k of free untaxed benefits given each and every year to individual employees, due to Congress specifically excluding employer provider health insurance benefit from taxation.
Clearly, this is unfair as it only benefits employees who receive health insurance from their employers.
But removing this benefit by eliminating employer provided health insurance would then result in a $6k-$30k cut in an employees compensation making any replacement difficult to effect.
The U.S. healthcare insurance market has been corrupted by the fact that most Americans receive health insurance through their employers.
This arrangement distorts the marketplace in numerous harmful ways:
1. People don’t know the true cost of their healthcare. Most employees have no idea how expensive their insurance really is until they lose their job and if they’re lucky, get the shock of signing up for COBRA.
2. Consumers lack real choice and price awareness. Since insurance is pre-selected by employers, people rarely shop for plans or pay attention to the actual cost of services covered by insurance.
3. Workers are locked into their jobs. Fear of losing health coverage discourages people from changing jobs, starting businesses, or retiring early. New jobs often come with waiting periods or inferior coverage.
The solution is to end employer-provided health insurance altogether.
If that’s politically impossible, then eliminate the tax breaks that incentivize companies to provide it, or heavily tax employer-sponsored insurance at multiples of its value (2x, 5x, or even 10x) to discourage employers from even offering it.
Once everyone is responsible for securing their own health insurance, regardless of employment status, the fiction that our current system “works” will collapse.
At that point, politicians will be forced to seriously consider a single-payer system for the general population, similar to what we seniors receive through Medicare.
Reasonable conjecture. But on their surfaces, these “Ways to Win” do not seem disruptive in the Clay Christensen frame. And despite appearances, the incumbents are not sitting still.
I agree that there is room for new entrants but there are tremendous barriers to scale to the level of legacy insurers. I'll leave it at that as there's too much to unpack.
Health insurance is one of those industries where we’ve gotten so used to the complexity that we almost accept it as normal. If AI can actually lower administrative costs while giving people more choice and a better experience, this could be a much bigger shift than simply making insurance cheaper.
Here's a little known fact that gets glossed over in discussions of health insurance alternatives (other than single payer).
Employer paid health insurance has a HUGE advantage over alternative proposals because employees ARE NOT TAXED on the cost of the health insurance benefit they receive! This results in something like $6k-30k of free untaxed benefits given each and every year to individual employees, due to Congress specifically excluding employer provider health insurance benefit from taxation.
Clearly, this is unfair as it only benefits employees who receive health insurance from their employers.
But removing this benefit by eliminating employer provided health insurance would then result in a $6k-$30k cut in an employees compensation making any replacement difficult to effect.
The U.S. healthcare insurance market has been corrupted by the fact that most Americans receive health insurance through their employers.
This arrangement distorts the marketplace in numerous harmful ways:
1. People don’t know the true cost of their healthcare. Most employees have no idea how expensive their insurance really is until they lose their job and if they’re lucky, get the shock of signing up for COBRA.
2. Consumers lack real choice and price awareness. Since insurance is pre-selected by employers, people rarely shop for plans or pay attention to the actual cost of services covered by insurance.
3. Workers are locked into their jobs. Fear of losing health coverage discourages people from changing jobs, starting businesses, or retiring early. New jobs often come with waiting periods or inferior coverage.
The solution is to end employer-provided health insurance altogether.
If that’s politically impossible, then eliminate the tax breaks that incentivize companies to provide it, or heavily tax employer-sponsored insurance at multiples of its value (2x, 5x, or even 10x) to discourage employers from even offering it.
Once everyone is responsible for securing their own health insurance, regardless of employment status, the fiction that our current system “works” will collapse.
At that point, politicians will be forced to seriously consider a single-payer system for the general population, similar to what we seniors receive through Medicare.
Thanks for posting our video. Too bad you guys missed out on us at $2M of ARR.
Have you heard of MedZero?
Reasonable conjecture. But on their surfaces, these “Ways to Win” do not seem disruptive in the Clay Christensen frame. And despite appearances, the incumbents are not sitting still.