To Inaugurate Service, Healthia Offers HSAs from Any Bank in the Country Free of Set-up Fees
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Healthia, the nation's first integrated comparison-shopping portal for health care products and services, today launched a website ( http://www.healthia.com/ ) that allows businesses and consumers to research and select health insurance plans, Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and doctors from across the country. Healthia is the first company to eliminate HSA set-up fees for customers who sign up for a health insurance plan on the Healthia web site. Founded by Internet industry veterans from WebMD and Valicert, the Healthia vision is to save consumers hundreds or thousands of dollars by providing information they need to shop around for health care as carefully as they do for other products.
"Healthia will help consumers and small business owners answer real-life questions they ask every day about health care, which is the most important purchase they will make," said Chini Krishnan, CEO and co-founder. "These questions include, 'How do I get my family on an HSA plan without paying excessive fees? Which is the right HSA plan? Will high-deductible plans really save me money? Which plan is right for me or my employees? Of the doctors covered by my health plan, which is the right specialist for the problem I have right now? How do I compare my local hospitals compare in price and ratings?'"
"Offering employee benefits is a key retention and recruiting tool for us, but the sky-rocketing prices and the expense of managing these plans is always threatening to make it cost-prohibitive to offer health benefits," said Girish Gaitonde, CEO at Xoriant, one of Healthia's clients. "Using Healthia's comprehensive site, we were able to choose the best plans for our employees, providing them better benefits and saving us thousands of dollars on plans and management fees."
Healthia's decision to reimburse start-up fees for HSAs, which can be as high as $40, is designed to spur the adoption of these tax-free private savings accounts. Like IRAs for health care, they allow money to accumulate for routine medical expenses and are used in conjunction with high-deductible health insurance policies. Industry-watchers have recognized the increasing popularity of HSAs as one of the cornerstones of the "Consumer-Driven Health Care" (CDH) movement. Healthia today offers its no-start-up-fee HSA program in most states, with full nationwide coverage expected soon. Consumers can find and compare dozens of no-setup-fee HSA right away at http://www.healthia.com/hsa_ds.php .
Ken Wood, former President and CEO of Blue Shield of California and now Principal at The Kohala Group, noted, "There is significant movement toward the consumer-driven health care concept because consumers are demanding the same depth of information and personal choice in selecting health insurance, doctors and hospitals as they do in making other major purchases -- especially when more of the cost is coming out of their own pockets." "But," added Wood, "there remain large gaps in the information resources consumers need to establish CDH as the norm in America's health care delivery system. That's why we see the Healthia site as so important, because it provides a user-friendly, research-driven comparison site for employers to compare insurance plans and consumers to choose packages that include doctors they trust at prices they can afford."
In another consumer health care innovation, Healthia has integrated its comparison-shopping tools into the nation's most-visited health care site, http://www.hsainsider.com/ , which previously served as an information portal for HSA shoppers.
"As successful as HSAInsider.com has been in providing information about the Health Savings Account concept, we realized its highest value would be in allowing consumers to compare and purchase actual HSA plans," said Dan Perrin, Managing Editor at HSA Insider. "That's why we're so excited about integrating Healthia's comparison-shopping capabilities into our site."
How Healthia Works
The Healthia site allows businesses and consumers to compare health plans by filling in a few fields such as company zip code, number of employees, average employee age and the desired amount of deductible. The same fields apply to individual plans, which are similarly displayed. The site also allows selection of doctors based on geography, specialty, average length of experience and whether they are board-certified or not. A "Reviews" tab allows shoppers to search for reviews of all selected doctors.
Healthia's innovation is its ability to allow shoppers to combine information about one subject -- favorite doctors, for instance -- with information about health plans covering those doctors. This integration of all critical health care buying information will ultimately be extended to cover the entire spectrum of health care decision-making: doctors, hospitals, prescriptions, health care plans, procedures and savings vehicles like HSAs.
As an example of cost savings through the Healthia site, by logging on to http://www.healthia.com/ihdhpselector.php , individuals can compare health plans with similar deductibles, request quotes, and choose the one with the lowest monthly premium. Consumers and businesses can realize even bigger savings via the Healthia site through lowered premiums achieved by combining an HSA with a high-deductible health plan, and in near future, by pricing out and comparison shopping for specific medical procedures.
"Unless we bring the same market forces to bear on health care costs that exist for other sectors of the US economy, our health care system will soon become unaffordable for all but the very rich," said David Cowan, general partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, the primary funding source of Healthia. "Bessemer supports Healthia because it is the most comprehensive solution to providing market information on health care products and services that we have seen."
About Healthia
Healthia was founded in 2005 to provide integrated comparison-shopping information on health care products and services, doctors and health plans to empower the drive for Consumer-Driven Health Care. Its co-founders are Chini Krishnan, founder of public-key infrastructure (PKI) validation company Valicert (which merged with Tumbleweed Communications), and Shankar Srinivasan, a member of the founding tem of Healtheon/WebMD. Healthia is a privately-held company headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, funded initially by Bessemer Venture Partners. Insurance brokers or banks that are interested in partnering with Healthia can visit http://www.healthia.com/brokercenter or http://www.healthia.com/bankcenter for more information. For further information, call Healthia toll-free at 877-296-3805 or visit the Healthia web site at http://www.healthia.com/ .
About Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners carries on the longest-standing venture capital operation in the country. With more than a billion dollars under management, BVP has nearly a century's experience financing and helping to build innovative, high-growth companies. Many leading innovators, including Parametric, Ciena, VeriSign, Staples, Gartner Group, Veritas and Skype selected BVP as their early-stage venture partner. BVP has offices in Silicon Valley, Massachusetts, New York, Shanghai, Bangalore and Mumbai.
CONTACT: Jackie Peterson of Trainer Communications, +1-415-831-5491, or mobile, +1-415-370-7059, or fax, +1-415-831-5492, or jackie@trainercomm.com, for Healthia
Web site: http://www.healthia.com/
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