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HealthSherpa (YC S12) has processed more than 3% of healthcare.gov enrollments

blog.healthsherpa.com

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Re: HealthSherpa (YC S12) has processed more than 3% of healthcare.gov enrollments

#12

Post by downandout »

nliang86 wrote: post #10
zaroth wrote: post #9

That's pretty awesome growth from the 40 signups NYT reported you had as of March last year! [1] Congratulations on the incredible break-out success. If the broker's cut is average just $100 / year (WAG) on 110,000 signups, that's ARR of $11 million. Holy shit, nicely done on $1.1m of funding. Their agent platform [2] nets just $10 per application and gives the agent the full commission, but even just $1m revenue is…

It's actually a mix - we are agent of record on a sizable portion, and we process enrollments for insurance companies and agents for the remainder. Our main goal is to making signing up as easy as possible. Our currently flow is getting individuals through in about 5 minutes, and families in around 10. The revenue will allow us to build many more useful features.

Just out of curiosity, did you drive this massive growth through tons of paid advertising, or some in some organic/viral way?

Re: HealthSherpa (YC S12) has processed more than 3% of healthcare.gov enrollments

#13

Post by chime »

I wish I had heard about this site just a month ago. I used eHealthInsurance and a bunch of similar sites extensively to find my self-insured plan. Using the worst-case sort on healthsherpa, I just found a better plan than the one I'm on. Too late for me to change now but here's hoping next year I get on a better plan.

Re: HealthSherpa (YC S12) has processed more than 3% of healthcare.gov enrollments

#14

Post by drawkbox »

chime wrote: post #13

I wish I had heard about this site just a month ago. I used eHealthInsurance and a bunch of similar sites extensively to find my self-insured plan. Using the worst-case sort on healthsherpa, I just found a better plan than the one I'm on. Too late for me to change now but here's hoping next year I get on a better plan.

Agreed, just did this as well. eHealthInsurance was awesome but I just ran through the same at HealthSherpa and it is an impressively smooth and minimal site. Such a nice change from usual health insurance sites. Granted eHealthInsurance I have used for a few years and it was easy as well. I like that more sites are making it simple and clear.

What we also need is payment through these sites because once you are signed up, paying through Aetna / Blue Cross and others is a inception like web ring from the 90s and not consumer ready, they have been company focused for too long and reliant on mail/phone. The plan I had at Aetna a year ago, had no lie, 7 clicks to get to the payment system. It was all POST ing so you could not go direct. A few pages on others took 30-45 seconds to load. I feel like all insurance companies sites feel like they can waste everyone's time because you have to do it.

Re: HealthSherpa (YC S12) has processed more than 3% of healthcare.gov enrollments

#15

Post by benten10 »

luftderfreiheit wrote: post #11

Not to drop the pc bomb... but isn't the name kind of racist? The Sherpa are an ethnic group, after all. HealthNegro? HealthWhitey?

Haha, I got just as angry as you did, but the sentiment as you expressed is not correct. It would be more like HealthIrish, HealthPolish, HealthCatalan, etc. Having said that, the misuse of Sherpa, specially in the US, really, really really bugs me. Really really really. A lot of my friends are Sherpas, and when someone on TV misuses 'Sherpa' I just..want..to...throw things at the tv. Sigh. We gotta wait for the Sherpa-in-Chief. We got Prabal Gurung, now we need Ang Dorje Sherpa to start designing cloths.

Re: HealthSherpa (YC S12) has processed more than 3% of healthcare.gov enrollments

#17

Post by hga »

benten10 wrote: post #15
luftderfreiheit wrote: post #11

Not to drop the pc bomb... but isn't the name kind of racist? The Sherpa are an ethnic group, after all. HealthNegro? HealthWhitey?

Haha, I got just as angry as you did, but the sentiment as you expressed is not correct. It would be more like HealthIrish, HealthPolish, HealthCatalan, etc. Having said that, the misuse of Sherpa, specially in the US, really, really really bugs me. Really really really. A lot of my friends are Sherpas, and when someone on TV misuses 'Sherpa' I just..want..to...throw things at the tv. Sigh. We gotta wait for the Sher…

At least when I was growing up in the '60s-'70s, the connotations of Sherpa were entirely positive; Wikipedia also doesn't indicate anything bad associated with the name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherpa (well, who knows about the quality of the "psychedelic power pop band from Auckland, New Zealand" :-). A nice, helpful expert who because of nature and nurture was better suited to the extreme environment of the Himalayas, who therefore carried more stuff than the "white" with whom the two formed a team, and got serious billing along with the latter. Moderately well read people from my era give equal billing to the team of Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary who first officially conquered the summit of Mount Everest.

Of course, not really following mass media since the '70s I don't know if the term has degraded since then, but at least it started from a good base. It's like the American usage of Indian tribe names for naming sports teams and Army helicopters, that's not done out of disrespect, although there are of course the inevitable malcontents.

Re: HealthSherpa (YC S12) has processed more than 3% of healthcare.gov enrollments

#19

Post by foolinaround »

csandstedt wrote: post #16

What is the benefit to using your site instead of healthcare.gov? I just ran a search (I'm in Florida) and it looks like the same options I have on healthcare.gov.

I believe it is only the UX...As far as I can see.
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