Launch HN: Savvy (YC W20) – Give employees tax-free cash for health insurance

As others have mentioned, the high cost of individual (e.g. Marketplace) insurance is one obvious drawback that remains. Even with 1 non-owner employee you can get better rates through e.g. simplyinsured.com

However, the monthly recurring cost strikes me as high. The major emphasis seems to be on setting up and picking a plan; to be slightly cynical, is this just the SaaS-ifaction of what would otherwise be a one-time setup fee?

Especially when working in a very regulated field. Who knows if ICHRA will last, maybe the next administration will scrap it. Kinda like how under Obama they had the individual mandate but Trump ended it. However some states have added an individual mandate for state residents since the federal one was eliminated, like MA, NJ, VT, CA, RI and DC. But there's still going through the courts as this whole individual mandate thing might have been unconstitutional in the first place, so those states might end up dropping them at some point again.

Plus I know there's SaaS apps to handle payroll and some of them integrate health care options. Seems like people don't like messing with this sort of stuff, will buy an option they think is safe and easy to handle and move on to their actual product unless they hired HR people with experience in this area who can be dedicated to managing this stuff. Seems like when it comes to some of these tasks of running a startup, you need some adult supervision. Might be a good programmer but all the ins and outs this and related stuff can be a huge distraction.

I guess since they had a background in HR and stuff doing a startup like this would be a bit easier than say me trying to do this...

Then another big thing even if you have insurance, who knows if you end up actually using it for anything if something won't be covered and then you get a big surprised bill. I feel like the whole in-network and out of network thing is the biggest scams. Say you looked on Google for the best Doctor, Dentist, specialist, etc and found one you liked you got to check the book they send you to see who's covered. Then another thing is a hospital can be in network, but someone like the anesthesiologist is out of network. Then remember seeing someone got charged $10 for an individually wrapped cough drop, when you could of just bought an entire bag at the local pharmacy.

So seem's like picking a plan out of some options sounds better though.

Also wonder since the advice with employees if someone quits, they say disable all accounts. Wonder if companies still have like a separate account for HR since don't some companies offer a web portal for insurance, probably also COBRA would be in that portal. However some companies this is all pen and paper but digitizing things something to think about... Like someone I know that worked at a factory, all this stuff was a packet you'd fill out with pen and paper and turn it in to someone in the office area. But I'd imagine tech companies would want to digitize a lot of this, and for remote teams that makes even more sense.

To your point on employees quitting - one of the benefits of Savvy is that if you change jobs, your insurance can stay with you as it is no longer tied to your employer.