Oscar Health Care, a Better Consumer Experience

by John Hansen

Simple. Intuitive. Easy. These are not usually words you see connected with health insurance. However, Oscar Health Care, a new up and coming carrier of health insurance in California, is making medical care easier in the golden state. When you get to the Oscar website, you are immediately greeted… “Hi, we’re Oscar. Smart, simple health insurance.”

Oscar health insurance is run by intelligent, technology-savvy leadership that is determined to make health care easier to understand and utilize.

Work Directly with the Consumer

CEO, Mario Schlosser, argues that it is a very strange thing for your health care to be connected to your employer. This odd connection causes the health insurance industry to cater more to HR departments than they do to consumers who actually use the health care plans.

Schlosser points out how Oscar Health Care is different. He says, “There is a reason why insurance companies are run the way they do. It is because they don’t actually sell to you or to the average guy on the streets. They sell to HR departments. The name of the game in the past decades in US health care has been [that] you essentially get insurance if you’re employed somewhere, and your HR department determines who you go with. When you leave your employer you have to leave your insurance company. It’s a little bit like changing hair dressers and changing from an iPhone to an android. Two things that have nothing to do with each other are weirdly artificially connected.”

He argues that essentially you could solve a lot of problems in health care by disconnecting it from employment. Then, the health care industry would have to cater to consumers rather than to HR departments.

Focus on Individual and Family Plans

In that spirit, Oscar Health Plans has made the decision to only sell individual and family plans. Their goal has been to work directly with the consumers.

Ideally, they would like the process to only involve two parties, Oscar Health Insurance and the consumer. However, the reality has been that they have needed other players to get their product to market. The state health insurance exchanges include Oscar health care plans. Also, brokers sell their plans.

As for yet, they have not offered group health insurance in California, but they are considering including small business plans in their portfolio. However, Oscar aims to continue to be consumer-focused even if and when they start dealing with employers and Human Resource departments.

Better than Other Health Insurance Companies

Oscar’s number one goal is to be the best in health care when it comes to consumer experience. Their three pillars are:

• Better Plans

• Better Health Care

• Better Experience

However, Oscar Health Care is obsessed with packaging and communicating their benefits in such a way that it makes sense to their customers. You can see the simplicity immediately on their website, www.hioscar.com.