Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: PickHealthInsurance.com

pickhealthinsurance.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 100 posts

Re: Show HN: PickHealthInsurance.com

#81

Post by anamax »

tptacek wrote: post #49
jpdoctor wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would be very valuable would be a crowdsourced version of these charts. Could not agree more with your post, and the item quoted above in particular. (My own case: I'm as healthy as an ox, wife has inflammatory arthritis, which makes the application look like a book. When everything is done, you can be sure that we end up paying $JACKED_RATE*$MYSTERY_FACTOR.)

My daughter had what we're pretty sure was a drug reaction seizure when she was 4. Uninsurable. You can also expect that any woman with any reproductive health issue, no matter how common, will be automatically declined for private health insurance, and will at best be able to obtain outrageously expensive last-resort insurance with a rider excluding huge swaths of her physiology. But these sound like simple gripes a…

> You can also expect that any woman with any reproductive health issue, no matter how common, will be automatically declined for private health insurance

Not so fast. If she never goes "bare", she can't be denied for pre-existing conditions.

Is it really that hard for people who know that they have chronic conditions to act as if they have chronic conditions?

Re: Show HN: PickHealthInsurance.com

#82

Post by jwco »

tptacek wrote: post #44

This is very pretty and I'm sure it's to some extent useful. However, I also find it misleading. As someone who has been through the process of buying private insurance before: there are a number of sites like this (though none of them as elegant and spare). All of them will give you comparative rate charts. But those rates don't mean anything. After you select a provider, you have to fill out their application, whic…

Crowdsourcing health insurance is a really interesting idea.

Why shouldn't I, and many other people, open our medical records and insurance information? I.e. post it to some publicly accessible database, anonymously or not.

Could we get insurance providers to make us individuals/families offers, then, instead of us having to do the searching?

It may take some time before such a social/industrial shift occurs, if ever.

In the meantime, a bot that submits my info to various providers and gives me their actual quotes in sortable format could expedite choosing health care based on actual quotes, rather than the (usu. equal or lower) advertised rates.

Re: Show HN: PickHealthInsurance.com

#83

Post by tptacek »

anamax wrote: post #81
tptacek wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter had what we're pretty sure was a drug reaction seizure when she was 4. Uninsurable. You can also expect that any woman with any reproductive health issue, no matter how common, will be automatically declined for private health insurance, and will at best be able to obtain outrageously expensive last-resort insurance with a rider excluding huge swaths of her physiology. But these sound like simple gripes a…

> You can also expect that any woman with any reproductive health issue, no matter how common, will be automatically declined for private health insurance Not so fast. If she never goes "bare", she can't be denied for pre-existing conditions. Is it really that hard for people who know that they have chronic conditions to act as if they have chronic conditions?

What do you mean, "goes bare"? My family has had continuous coverage since I get married, and both me and my wife had continuous coverage prior to that. Are you trying to say it's impossible to be denied coverage? You're wrong.

I'm not going to get into the severity of the "chronic conditions" we're talking about because they're none of your business, but based on prevalence in the population, it's crazy that they're auto-decline conditions.

Re: Show HN: PickHealthInsurance.com

#84

Post by separated »

gurgeous wrote: post #2

I'm releasing the first version of PickHealthInsurance today. It helps you compare health insurance plans (individual, not group) in the US. I put this together over a few weekends. My COBRA is about to run out and I found it exceptionally difficult to compare plans and prices with the existing sites. This is the third time I've had to buy individual insurance and I finally decided to do something about it. Things cr…

Have you heard of finder.healthcare.gov? It provides more detailed information with a few basic questions. It also provides a range of premiums per hit, and most important (in my opinion) gives feedback on how likely one is to actually land the quoted premium.

The site was built by HHS, which had access to information provided by the insurance companies themselves on their acceptance rates, etc. I'm not sure why the insurance companies agreed to provide that sort of information, nor whether that information was made available to the public at large.

Re: Show HN: PickHealthInsurance.com

#85

Post by ComputerGuru »

Your site lists the same companies as every other site out there - the problem is, it's missing so many other companies out there. It's basically a list of the same four or five companies over and over and over again with different plans.

Where are all my local companies? Where's BlueCross BlueShield?

Re: Show HN: PickHealthInsurance.com

#86

Post by nroach »

encoderer wrote: post #52
tptacek wrote: post #44

This is very pretty and I'm sure it's to some extent useful. However, I also find it misleading. As someone who has been through the process of buying private insurance before: there are a number of sites like this (though none of them as elegant and spare). All of them will give you comparative rate charts. But those rates don't mean anything. After you select a provider, you have to fill out their application, whic…

To offer a different perspective... I'm younger than you, and was shopping for individual insurance. In my case, the hardest part was trying to compare plans from the companies in my area. All of them have slightly different ways of making it profitable for them. One could have Rx copays, but a special deductible for ER and urgent care visits. Another company may have only Rx reimbursement and office visit copays. So…

This is a cool idea, and a good first start implementation. It's also the basis of the "Health Insurance Exchanges" that are due to be set up by the Affordable Care Act (a/k/a Obamacare in the pejorative).

Starting in 2014 individuals can buy insurance directly in an Affordable Insurance Exchange. An Exchange is intended to be a transparent and competitive insurance marketplace where individuals and small businesses can directly buy qualified health benefit plans.

It doesn't solve the immediate problem obviously, but the Federal timeline for implementation is here: http://www.healthcare.gov/law/timeline/index.html

Individual states are free to set up exchanges prior to the mandatory deadline, but with politics being what they are, that's not a guarantee of swift action. The details on implementation will be promulgated by Health and Human Services, most likely via the CFR and Federal Register, so we don't yet know how it will shake out in detail. But there's an overview PR-style here: http://www.healthcare.gov/news/blog/health_insurance_exchang...

Re: Show HN: PickHealthInsurance.com

#87

Post by patja »

It gives me an inaccurate rate and just sends me to ehealthinsurance.com where they ask for just a tiny bit more info (ages of all enrollees) and gives me a different, more accurate rate. So why do I go to pickhealthinsurance.com again? All it does is give a wrong answer and refer me to a competitor (at least I am perceiving you as trying to compete with the likes of ehealthinsurance.com) who gives me a correct answer.

Re: Show HN: PickHealthInsurance.com

#89

Post by LogicHoleFlaw »

gurgeous wrote: post #67
tptacek wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure Washington State is that simple? I don't live there and only spent a few moments researching, but I don't see that WA has guaranteed issue with continuous coverage. It does seem to have guaranteed renewal , but that locks you into one insurer, doesn't it?

Here we have something called the Standard Health Questionnaire (SHQ), which they make you fill out when applying for insurance. But there are a bunch of exceptions at the top which make it possible to avoid submitting the SHQ. Running out of COBRA is one of those exceptions.

This is exactly how it worked for me when my COBRA coverage expired and I lived in WA. Bypassing the SHQ was key to getting reasonable rates for myself.
Post reply on HN