Can three technologists, $40 million, and Obamacare change health insurance forever? - Ezra Klein

[Bill USA]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/26/can-three-technologists-40-million-and-obamacare-change-health-insurance-forever/
(emphases my own)

Come Oct. 1, all 50 states and the District of Columbia will open health insurance marketplaces (sometimes called “exchanges”) to serve people who don’t get coverage from their employer or a government program. The insurers in these online marketplaces won’t be able to discriminate based on existing conditions. They have to offer a core package of essential benefits and clear pricing information. And they’re about to see a flood of first-time customers.

Meet Oscar

In New York, one of those insurers will be Oscar. That’s the name Kushner and his co-founders chose, hoping it would help humanize their company.[font color="blue"] “I don’t think we could do this without Obamacare,” Schlosser said. “You’d have to break into a market that’s been pretty ‘oligopolized’ with big insurers catering to brokers, agency houses and big employers. But now we have a direct connection to the consumer.”[/font]

The idea behind Oscar is that using your insurance should be as easy and intuitive as using your Facebook account or your Tumblr page. As Nazemi puts it, “We have a responsibility to take the friction and pain of engagement out of the process.” The experience is familiar to anyone who uses today’s leading social networks (the former head of engineering at Tumblr now works for Oscar). But for anyone who’s used the Web sites of Aetna or Cigna or Blue Cross Blue Shield, it’s something of a revelation.

Sign into your Oscar insurance account online, and you’ll see a few carefully chosen options on a page that’s otherwise white and clean. At the top, you can type in your symptoms and be taken immediately to a guided set of options, including a button that lets you talk to a doctor. Click it, and a doctor will call you, wherever you are, whatever time of day it is, within 20 minutes. If you need to see someone, the site will offer a list of nearby providers, tell you which ones are recommended for your condition and tell you how much each is likely to cost.

(more)

[bemildred]

1. That ought to wake them up. nt