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Health Insurance and Technology


During ‘Paul's roadshow', San Francisco town hall event in November last year, someone asked a question about possibilities of us acquiring a Healthcare Provider / Hospital Group. Paul shared that running a Healthcare Provider / Hospital Group requires specialized expertise and assets. Acquisitions of these expertise and assets is expensive requiring financial planning. Also integrating newly acquired entity will present organizational challenges. Due to these reasons, in the near term we will not pursue such an acquisition and we have ample opportunities in our current business to grow - organically and through acquisitions of other health plans – and we will focus on that.

It was good to know that our leadership has considered acquiring a Healthcare Provider / Hospital Group, but it was not was something we will pursue in near term due to reasons stated above. 

I left the meeting thinking if these barriers to entry (cost and other organizational challenges) can be overcome using Technology. This thought lingered on and I started to look for technology companies who have may have achieved that. Uber and airbnb were the ones that stood out to me. Uber does not own cars or employ drivers who drive these cars (though that may soon be changing in some geographies), but taps into the sharing economy by providing a platform and process that enables connecting drivers with the riders. Airbnb does the same for rental properties without owning them. 

Can this be applied to Health Insurance?  I decided to look at the basics and see what ‘Health Insurance’ is in order to determine applicability of ‘Uber’ like approach. 

According to the Health Insurance Association of America, health insurance is defined as "coverage that provides for the payments of benefits as a result of sickness or injury.   Wikipedia describes Health Insurance as “insurance against the risk of incurring medical expenses among individuals. By estimating the overall risk of health care and health system expenses, among a targeted group, an insurer can develop a routine finance structure, such as a monthly premium or payroll tax, to ensure that money is available to pay for the health care benefits specified in the insurance agreement. The benefit is administered by a central organization such as a government agency, private business, or not-for-profit entity.”

Reading this made me think that we are already using ‘Uber’ like approach! Like Uber, we provide financial structure, create a process and ‘set terms’ in an agreement / contract and connect ‘patients’ with provider’. This is exciting because, initially I was thinking for copying Uber’s approach and now I am thinking that it’s the other way round . 

One thing that Uber did which we have not so far, is use newer technological capabilities and apply them to a specific pain point. to make these connections happen. 

How do we do as Health Insurance company to use technology to deliver healthcare to patient in a timely manner – here is one idea : Bl-Uber

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