<story><title>What Happens When a Healthcare Startup Leaves You With the Bill</title><url>http://omnifeed.com/article/valleywag.gawker.com/what-happens-when-a-healthcare-startup-leaves-you-with-1598186714</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jackgavigan</author><text>There is, sometimes, a tendency on the part of young, ambitious entrepreneurs, to be overly optimistic and assume that they can gatecrash an industry they know nothing about, set up a slick website and disrupt the big, bloated, uncool incumbents.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes that works out but I believe that a new entrants chances of success are a lot higher if they have somebody on board who is actually familiar with the industry sector they&amp;#x27;re trying to disrupt.&lt;p&gt;None of Oscar&amp;#x27;s founders have worked in health insurance previously. They come from tech entrepreneur&amp;#x2F;VC, consulting and technology backgrounds.&lt;p&gt;Edit: Here&amp;#x27;s a good example of where some industry expertise might have been useful: &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;..it was a design decision to limit the information presented to hospital&amp;#x27;s on what is covered in detail (like in­house labs).&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s currently a big trend in design towards making things simple. But there&amp;#x27;s a difference between making stuff simple and dumbing it down. Sometimes, stuff looks complicated &lt;i&gt;because it&amp;#x27;s complicated&lt;/i&gt;.</text></comment>
<story><title>What Happens When a Healthcare Startup Leaves You With the Bill</title><url>http://omnifeed.com/article/valleywag.gawker.com/what-happens-when-a-healthcare-startup-leaves-you-with-1598186714</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>kjjw</author><text>&amp;quot;So I went to my new Oscar-­approved doctor, who recommended routine blood work. The hospital called up Oscar and Oscar&amp;#x27;s operations department assured both the in-­hospital labs and administrators that this blood work would be covered by my plan so we went ahead with it.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Urgh American health care is just so &lt;i&gt;weird&lt;/i&gt;. It makes my skin crawl.</text></comment>