I’m not a health expert. Then again, you don’t have to be one to know our healthcare system is a mess.
I found out the same way you did. The same way everybody finds out… from experiencing it firsthand.
We relive it as we hear similar stories told by friends and family.A colleague of mine – CP – told me one last week.Her last job was at a startup. Now, typically startups don’t have much money. So the health coverage isn’t generous to begin with. That was certainly the case for her.
It got worse when her boss was diagnosed with cancer. His escalating health bills soon meant that the whole company was paying much higher fees. Keep in mind that CP’s health profile didn’t change one iota.
Another friend told me how recent dental work cost him $4,000 when his insurance policy indicated it would only cost $1,500. The problem? His insurance company denied the claim. He chose to listen to his dentist and swallow the costs.
I’ve had some bad experiences myself. The latest is when I took my wife Cecily to the emergency room. It happened a couple of months ago.She was experiencing awful pain. The nurse we called said it might be a hernia. That we should go to the hospital right away. You don’t mess with hernias. So I rushed her to the ER. She had a blood test and X-rays taken. They found no hernia, nothing.
The bill? I knew it wasn’t going to be cheap. But it was still much, much more than I expected.
Healthcare Needs to Get Better in Everything
The health insurance industry is a fertile area for startups. Is there anyone who believes that it doesn’t need fixing?
Many of these businesses have gone on to do highly successful IPOs. Others have been bought out.
Just today, Intarcia Therapeutics announced that it bought out Phoundry Pharmaceuticals. Phoundry makes “optimized peptides” that treat metabolic disease.Intarcia makes an implantable mini-pump that continuously delivers (stable in-body) medication (mainly for diabetes patients) for upward of a year. It has a valuation of $1.8 billion.
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