A hot startup that could be a model for the JPMorgan-Amazon-Berkshire Hathaway healthcare initiative just raised $110 million
- Collective Health, a startup that works with self-insured employers, just raised $110 million.
- The company helps employers build out health plans that fit their needs by adding technology with the hope of making things like submitting claims and reading bills easier.
- Self-insured employer plans have recently come into the spotlight after JPMorgan, Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway said they're forming a new independent nonprofit venture aimed at lowering healthcare costs for their employees.
A startup that could be a good model for the JPMorgan-Amazon-Berkshire Hathaway healthcare initiative just raised an additional $110 million.
Collective Health helps employers build out health plans that fit their needs by adding technology with the hope of making things like submitting claims and reading bills easier.
In total, the company has now raised about $230 million from investors including Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, NEA, and GV.
If you're an employee with a self-insured employer, it means that when you're going to a doctor's appointment, your employer is ultimately footing the bill for the MRI you receive, rather than a health insurer. More than half of the non-elderly population is covered by an employer-sponsored plan, and almost 80% of large companies are self-insured.
The companies that you might be familiar with on a health insurance card are there in the middle to handle the logistics of getting the claim from one place to another, which means you might not realize your employer's footing the entire bill on the other end. Employers pay insurance companies for their services on a per member, per month basis.
What Collective Health is trying to do is make that experience better. The most recent funding round will be used to build out its technology platform and increase its operations.
So far, Collective Health covers about 125,000 members, consisting of employees and their dependents from companies like Zendesk, Palantir, eBay, and Pinterest.