Backing Collective Health
By Scott Raney
I don’t like my existing health plan. I have good coverage and access to great doctors, but I still find the overall experience to be really frustrating. Every time a member of my family sees a medical professional, an onslaught of mail follows providing a lot of data, but very little insight. “THIS IS NOT A BILL” is stamped over the countless statements I receive, but in the barrage of numbers there is no clear explanation of benefits or a summary of where I stand relative to my deductibles. Deciphering the communications takes way too much time and I have an uneasy feeling that somehow I am getting screwed. The web experience for customer service and support is equally baffling, so much so that I most often opt to calling customer service and sitting on hold for a while to get basic questions answered.
What’s worse is that as an employer, I have very little control of building the health care plan I want for my employees. Outside of very large companies, businesses are stuck choosing from a limited set of plans that aren’t customized or differentiated in any meaningful way. Aside from payroll, healthcare is the single most employee benefit a company provides and, by and large, their employees aren’t really satisfied.
Now imagine a health plan that provides great coverage and access to the best doctors, while also providing an incredibly easy to use web and mobile interface to access coverage data, deductible information, and even anticipated costs of pending procedures, etc. As an employer, imagine having the ability to build your own plans optimized to your employee base and offering truly differentiated benefits.
In an effort to make this a reality, we are pleased to announce our investment in Collective Health. Collective Health is a technology company that has built a powerful software platform and partnered with leading healthcare networks to provide a breakthrough healthcare experience for employees and employers. It is the healthcare plan I want and I believe you will too.
While we were drawn to the product and market, as always, our primary motivation is the people. Founders, Ali Diab and Rajaie Batniji, have built a remarkable team bringing to together data scientists, designers, software architects, healthcare experts, and actuaries uniquely suited to take on the task of building a better health plan. It is a bold idea and we love partnering with teams with huge ambitions ready to face whatever challenges may come. We are thrilled to partner with them on their journey and look forward to helping discover how good a health plan can be.
