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Comment by RIMR | Hacker News Reader

Oh wonderful - more for-profit exploitation of people's need for healthcare. This business model is only possible because of deregulation by our current Federal Government.

I hate to sound mean, but I really hope that this business fails. I know people worked hard on this with an expectation of a financial return, but 68,000 people die every year because of this illusion of choice being exploited here, and if we can fix the system and eliminate the health insurance industry altogether we're all be better off.

The problem with ventures like this is that they claim to be healthcare companies, but their entire model is based around minimizing expenses and maximizing profits. Absolutely no emphasis is put on ensuring that human beings get the healthcare they need without going bankrupt - just that employers can pay as little as possible and insurance companies can get as many members as possible.

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Almost all of our current customers are using us to offer health benefits to their employees for the first time.

I understand there is frustration with the larger healthcare system. No question there are large, systemic challenges. We saw a problem that SMBs weren't offering health benefits, and felt like there was a solution to help them. That seemed preferable to waiting on the sidelines for a complete overhaul of US healthcare.

That's the thing: Your customers shouldn't even be part of the equation.

Healthcare is a HUMAN right, not a workers right or a "if you have enough money to pay for it" right.

Ideally, your customers and their employees shouldn't have to worry about this at all. You are just another middleman standing between human beings and their health.

I see no reason you should exist. You aren't innovating or making the world better. Clearly your purpose extends no further than to create profits for shareholders.

Please stop taking HN threads into generic ideological flamewar. These angry, generic discussions are all the same, and not what this site is for. We've had to ask you about this repeatedly already.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't know the details of the new law, but separating healthcare from employment is a positive step towards fixing the system.

Unless this can be used by employers to move from paying for an employee's healthcare, to giving them a smaller amount to buy their own.

People own Kias and Lamborghinis.

People eat at Popeye's and also at Whole Foods

No one bats an eye as long as both cars work as advertised and the food is edible.

When did it become mandatory for employers to pay for lmborghini-level service? ?

This can lift a lot of employees in small companies from having no health insurance to having at least some level of coverage, and it seems to do so with minimal hassle for the employer. If you hope this fails, you're hoping those employees continue to have no real means of getting health care.

> I hate to sound mean, but I really hope that this business fails.

I feel bad saying this, but I'm inclined to agree. Part of the value prop with mid-large businesses subsidizing healthcare is the ability to bargain collectively. Individuals can't do this, and just paying that employer contribution to individual subscribers for them to find their own healthcare plan will result in net-negative benefits year over year.

The more I think about this, the more this startup concerns me.

You guys keep saying you hate saying this and feel bad saying this, yet you've each posted repeatedly and your comments already make up a third of the thread as I write this. That's because reflexive comments on divisive topics (like healthcare) are the easiest to write and tend to fill up the threads early on.

Let's not have yet another predictable flamewar about U.S. healthcare. It will just turn into the same flamewar as the other flamewars, which is something we try in general to avoid on this site. Meanwhile there's something specific to discuss about this startup's particular model, regardless of where one stands on the brokenness of the overall system.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

An argument can be made that the model shouldn't exist in the first place, and part of our comments here are to see if we can steer the founding team towards an alternative that extracts value from a different target, in this case the insurance companies rather than individuals or SBs. In a perfect world, YC wouldn't be hedging in favor of a deteriorating healthcare system in the US by betting on this concept, but that's spilled milk under the bridge, so the goal now is to help point the venture a bit differently.

Regrets if you view it as non-productive, but the comments are certainly intended to be (especially my latest one prior to this comment I'm posting now)

If you mean the subthread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22527801, that's indeed much better.

Appreciate you.

Small and medium businesses have very, very little leverage in negotiating health insurance costs. At best, they just switch to a new insurer every year as prices change.

In most cases, an option like this is better than nothing, which the founder has already pointed out is a lot of their current base.

> Small and medium businesses have very, very little leverage in negotiating health insurance costs. At best, they just switch to a new insurer every year as prices change.

Right. And that's why I wish a startup like this would instead be focused on helping s-m businesses bargain for more rather than extract from less.

We absolutely want to use our platform as a base for negotiating lower prices. Currently our customers have 0 negotiating power and can actually get serious price increases if a single person in their group gets sick. For employers in this situation, it's often cheaper to use us and get employees all the same tax savings, but buy on the individual market.

Thanks for posting this. I'm looking forward to seeing this service offering as your customer base increases.

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