Making Medicare Easier

An interview with Rafal Walkiewicz, Founder of Hella Health

Hi all, I was excited to do this Q&A with Rafal Walkiewicz, my former colleague at Goldman Sachs, who has now founded a Medicare marketplace startup called Hella Health. Rafal had many years of experience in the insurance industry, both as an advisor and operator, before starting this company. I was interested to hear his perspectives on the healthcare market and how he has approached building a company in the space.

Rafal, thanks for taking the time to do this Q&A! Can you tell us a little about what Hella Health, your new company, does?

At Hella Health, we are transforming the Medicare buying experience for older Americans. We use technology to simplify the task of choosing a Medicare plan.

Right now, the Medicare marketplace is complicated and daunting. It’s almost impossible to compare coverage options because of the difficulty in navigating the enrollment process. Technology makes it possible for older Americans to find the right plan for them.

The other big problem today is that sales agents on the phone often pressure customers into choosing plans that they are incentivized to sell. Our technology doesn’t push coverage but helps people find the best plan for them – and we don’t take incentive payments from insurers.

What are the problems with current Medicare shopping options that Hella Health is trying to fix?

Every day 10 thousand people become eligible for Medicare, and every year 10 million Medicare members change plans. But as I say we have the worst possible system for choosing Medicare plans.

Right now, most older Americans must make their choices with an agent on the phone. Phones are a terrible communication setting for choosing a complex product that needs to meet each person’s unique needs. The phone is impersonal, a lousy place to parse out detailed differences between different options, and totally ill-suited for explaining the complicated options associated with Medicare.

The situation is made worse by some of the salespeople who make calls and answer the phones when older Americans respond to ads. Agents find it difficult to advise customers given that there are hundreds of plans with millions of different options within them: no human could master the details. To exacerbate the problem, agents are often incentivized to sell specific plans, not to help actually find the right plan for them. But it gets even worse: during annual enrollment period, the industry experiences an influx of seasonal, undertrained employees who want to get the sale done as fast as possible. The result is rampant mis-selling.

It can be tricky to be creative in a highly regulated space like healthcare. How do you aim to differentiate vs. other companies given regulatory constraints?

Hella Health is a customer centered business. Unlike many of our competitors, we do not try to convince customers that Medicare is so complicated that there’s no chance they can pick the right Medicare option on their own and therefore they need to outsource it to an agent on the phone. Our goal is to do exactly the opposite; we want to show that Medicare shopping can be easy. Customers are smart and savvy, and with the right tools and tech, they are the ones who can make the best decision for themselves. We are here to empower them. Customers should have the opportunity to learn at their own pace and be in control of their buying experience. We are transparent and unbiased and use use modern tech to help them understand their options. We respect customers time and privacy, and strive to be their long-term partner.

Medicare distribution is heavily regulated, and our model actually aligns with regulators’ goals. Regulators are targeting issues that are often exacerbated by the use of phone as a predominant sales channel and our business model solves them altogether. Regulators make a big effort to address Medicare mis-selling and to protect older Americans. We created Hella Health to do the same.

What type of traction has Hella Health seen in the market so far?

Our business model helps address the issues facing all industry stakeholders. We are seeing a great response to our offering from customers, carriers and regulators. We’re simplifying the process for everyone. Often carriers find it surprising when we tell them that we do not take marketing incentives from them, but we do this to ensure we can provide unbiased recommendations. We strive to build long-term relationships investing in retention, transparency, and privacy.

What’s on the product roadmap for Hella Health over the coming year beyond current capabilities?

We launched Hella Health as the first 100% digital, customer-centric online Medicare agency with best-in-class advisory, quoting, and enrollment automation tools.

We are licensed to sell in 50 states and DC. We started with an offering of Medicare Advantage and Prescription Drug Plans from a leading national carrier and a group of regional plans.  We are adding more likeminded carrier partners to the platform. You will also see Medicare Supplement Plans added to the offering very shortly.

We are also investing in customer service tools that support our vision of easily accessible, transparent, and unbiased support. One that’s coming soon is our interactive chat function that our customers can use at their convenience to get support while shopping for plans.

Our goal is to continuously make our tools even more accessible and intuitive, and to respond to our customers’ and insurance partners’ requests. We are constantly working to make our technology smarter.

Finally, you will also see a big investment in educational content to aid self-paced discovery and learning.

You have a background working in insurance; did your previous work in the sector inform the idea for Hella Health at all, and if so, how?

Insurance is an essential product, but often gets a bad rap. I spent the last two decades of my career looking for ways to change it. Over the years, I’ve had an opportunity to work with great customer-centric businesses that were modernizing antiquated, ineffective models.

Now, we are working hard to do the same with Medicare distribution. It is sometimes said that technology implementation in insurance is 10 years behind other financial services. We think that Medicare distribution is 10 years behind insurance, and our technology is bringing it into the 21st century — finally. Hella Health addresses fundamental issues around transparency, interest alignment, security, and privacy.

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