I'd love to be able to specify the number of children I'd be putting on my plan (maybe not on that first page, but on an internal "refine" page?).
Also, it'd be great to have checkboxes allowing me to select two or three plans, to then compare them head-to-head.
But, again, this is an excellent first version. I look forward to seeing where it goes.
Also, I really like that it's fast. Don't lose that part. :-)
It also highlights the near complete lack of correlation between how much a plan costs and how much benefits you get.
My startup, Bloom Health (http://gobloomhealth.com) is in a similar space, but where you're going directly to consumer's who are shopping for their own health insurance (B2C), we're a B2B2C model, we work with employers and provide health insurance choices to their employees.
We work within the employer system by changing from the existing defined benefit health insurance model (where employees get health insurance as a benefit for working for their employer) to a defined contribution model (where employees get a set amount of pre-tax money from their employer to spend however they want, including health/dental/HSA/etc.
The site was built by HHS, which had access to information provided by the insurance companies themselves on their acceptance rates, etc. I'm not sure why the insurance companies agreed to provide that sort of information, nor whether that information was made available to the public at large.
Idea: Perhaps add columns so you can sort plans by co-pay for Doctor visits, ER visits, an prescriptions? Maybe hide those columns by default so the GUI doesn't get too cluttered, but let users display them if desired.
Your core problem is going to be that approximate rates are based on answers to questions. The fewer questions you answer the less accurate your rate will be. Go talk to a few agents and let them draw out the benefits for you, they are free to you and they exist for this very purpose!
If you could parlay some deals with the insurance companies related to being an "authorized reseller" where you could input Medical History and come out with a Comparative List that you could sign up for.... you'd be sitting pretty. IMO.
BTW: Twitter Bootstrap looks like a great base template. I'm surprised I have never seen it before.
I put this together over a few weekends. My COBRA is about to run out and I found it exceptionally difficult to compare plans and prices with the existing sites. This is the third time I've had to buy individual insurance and I finally decided to do something about it.
Things crystallized for me when I almost bought a plan that claimed to cover maternity, only to discover late in the game that it had a separate $20,000 maternity deductible! What a mess!
I have a few goals with PickHealthInsurance:
- start showing approximate rates almost immediately, don't pester me with a bunch of questions
- explain confusing terms like "coinsurance" and point out the difference between a PPO and a POS.
- show plan stats up front, not buried deep within the bowels of the application process
- make it easy to use and blazingly fast
Built with:
- Rails 3.1 (HAML, Sass, Coffeescript)
- Twitter Bootstrap CSS
- Deployed on Heroku/MongoHQ
What do you think?