Apps to Use When Shopping for Health Insurance Win National Competition – Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Princeton, N.J. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has named Washington, D.C.-based Consumers’ CHECKBOOK as the winner of its first ‘Plan Choice Challenge,’ a nationwide competition facilitated by Health 2.0 to design a technology application that helps people evaluate their health insurance options.

Stride Health (San Francisco, Calif.) and Clear Health Analytics (Stamford, Conn.) took second and third place, respectively. “The response to this challenge has been overwhelming, and the creativity and talent on display in these applications confirms that developers will play a vital role in moving this market forward.”

The winning application, Consumers’ CHECKBOOK’s Plan Compare tool, enables consumers to scroll through all available plans on a single webpage and compare for each plan: 1) estimated average total yearly cost (premium plus out-of-pocket) for people of the same family size, ages, health status, and other characteristics as the user, 2) risk (the total cost in a very high health-care-usage year), 3) an overall quality rating that the user can personalize based on what quality dimensions matter most to the user; and 4) which of a list of preferred doctors the user has identified participate in the plan. “We know if they don’t get quick answers, ideally in less than five minutes, they’ll take shortcuts like choosing based on lowest premium alone or lowest deductible and end up wasting thousands of dollars.”

Stride Health secured second place with its mobile application billed as the ‘world’s first health insurance recommendation engine,’ which recommends a health plan by intelligently forecasting total annual costs based on demographics, medical conditions, prescription drugs, and financial information input by the consumer.