It’s our (both co-founders Carl & Dave) home state. So the fact that we are releasing the first stage of our NH public claims platform is quite exciting. Dave and I used to kill time during our high school summers driving through Southern NH’s bucolic towns thinking of different ideas and well, let’s be honest, trying to find someone to buy us beer. 20 years later with kids and families, we finally come to the realization that the time to have tried a start-up was probably when we had free time…go figure. As they say, youth is wasted on the young. But those were great days indeed. Despite the fact that we both live in Mass, our roots are still very much anchored in the great 603.
The initial content we are publishing is cost data for various types of insurance products; the lion’s share comprise HMO or PPO plans. We hope to drill down to the individual provider level at some point, but we are limited by what the state releases in terms of fields. But the state made it pretty darn easy to get the data; a one-page application followed by a little delay in delivery, but in the meantime folks at the Department of Health and Human Services were great at addressing our questions.
Suffice to say coming up to speed on medical cost procedural terminology and trying to understand the labyrinthine medical claims system wasn’t what we had in mind when we thought about doing a “sexy start up”. But we believe the work we are doing is of a MUCH higher value to consumers than the typical ephemeral dating app that comes and goes with each dot-com bubble. Price transparency is coming to consumers at a time when it is most needed. More consumers are being forced to elect high deductible health plans, so knowing the relative costs of health care is imperative.
Our initial beta is free for the time being and hope to keep it that way. We’ve been told the way to make billions is advertising on the internet, but we’ll see. We’re skeptics.
Consumers can register and peruse the initial release here:
Keep in mind that procedural search keywords are case-sensitive. So if MRI is the key term, be sure to capitalize.
Happy Hiving.
Carl
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