Decent December update

Our vision is becoming more real by the day.

We’re partnering with industry leaders like Costco.

• Decent has partnered with Costco (yes, that one) to offer Pharmacy Benefit Management (PBM) services to members via 65,000 pharmacies. Costco will process and pay prescription drug claims, contract with pharmacies, build and maintain drug formularies, and negotiate discounts and rebates from drug manufacturers. Like much of healthcare, the PBM market is known for opacity and perverse incentives — and Costco is the emerging market leader for transparency and fairness. Our alignment was obvious from the first conversation.
• Decent has partnered with claims clearinghouse Healthcare IP — a less famous name than Costco’s, but one with equal industry respect. Healthcare IP will act as an EDI gateway, helping to receive and respond to basic healthcare transactions with providers, like eligibility requests and claims submissions.
• Decent became one of 12 founding members of Messari’s Disclosures Registry, joining other leaders like Aion, Blockstack, Civic, and District0x to commit to voluntary disclosures of key financial information.
• Decent will also be a founding member of Blockchain in Healthcare Global, a new IEEE ISTO trade association coming soon from Heather Flannery, a close friend to our team and the leader of Consensys Health.

Most of our engineering team visiting Seattle. Maciej was missed!

We’re building something people want.

• We showed freelancers the plan we administer and a Big Insurance Startup’s plan in the same category. 64% of freelancers with a preference picked Decent.

Quotes from freelancers who chose Decent:
“I feel like I have more control and information with this plan.”
“No co-pay for Primary Care visits.”
“I like knowing [how] much I would need to pay.”
“Plan 2 [is] more consistent and more accessible.”
“The second plan seems better in every way.”

• We’re putting Direct Primary Care at the center. I wrote about why here — Direct Primary Care is the future of health — and DPC doctors across the country have been reaching out to help.
• I sometimes joke that “We’re tackling the most regulated industry in the country with the most overhyped technology in the world. What could go wrong?” We spent 5 hours considering that question with ace investors at Maverick including Prateesh Maheshwari, who was at Oscar for 3 years as Director of Finance & Strategy. Notes on our incredibly helpful session are here: Your team knows what’s going to kill you.
• We’ve already been approached by 3 more associations asking when Decent can administer health plans for their members. Several of them want unique benefits. Our work to build a protocol for flexible health insurance pools worldwide has begun.
• There’s more detail on what we’re building and why on this Hacker Noon podcast with Trent Lapinski, and on this Venture Stories podcast with Erik Torenberg of Village Global and Nikhil Krishnan of CB Insights.

We don’t plan to think about fundraising until after our product launch.

• While we appreciate the inbound interest in funding Decent, we are focused on building value and launching successfully in 2019.

Thanks for reading,

Nick and the Decent team