[shepardrtc]

This seems similar to third-party warranty companies. They offer full coverage for low amounts, but when the time comes for them to pay up, they're impossible to deal with. Can't reach them on the phone, they need things to be faxed(!) over, and then because of so-and-so reason, it won't be covered.

Healthcare shouldn't be handled by startups. Its too expensive and there's too much riding on it for something that could go belly-up at any moment to handle.

Of course, that brings up the question: How do you actually start an insurance company? I'd imagine that in a perfect world, the government could guarantee your coverage until you get enough in your coffers to handle things without a backup.

[flatline]

I've talked to a couple health-care startups on the East Coast that have started by tackling one small aspect of healthcare and built off of that. Prescription drug tracking. OR procedures and checklists. There are tons of companies in the medical startup space that are doing good work, there are tons of areas that traditional big tech companies have failed to innovate in that are ripe for being upset.

Playing fast and loose with insurance claims sounds more like outright fraud.

[commandar]

>I've talked to a couple health-care startups on the East Coast that have started by tackling one small aspect of healthcare and built off of that. Prescription drug tracking. OR procedures and checklists. There are tons of companies in the medical startup space that are doing good work, there are tons of areas that traditional big tech companies have failed to innovate in that are ripe for being upset.

While this is true, one of the problems currently being faced by the industry right now is that all of these niche vendors have their own ideas about how data should be handled, and it's resulted in a fair amount of balkanization of the healthcare IT industry.

It's getting better, and HITECH and the ACA are finally pushing toward real standardization and data interchange, but from where I'm sitting (working in healthcare integration), it's probably going to take us another decade to sort out the mess things are in today.

[sp332]

Can you buy a good after-market warranty? I mean the dealers must be getting their first-party warranties from somewhere.

[shepardrtc]

Perhaps, but I've never seen one. Though I suppose getting an extended warranty from the manufacturer is in the same vein. And dealers work more naturally with the manufacturer so there's usually less headache.