Dive Brief:
- San Francisco-based Stride Health recently received an additional $13 million in funding, with the bulk of the money coming from Venrock, and the rest from NEA and Fidelity Biosciences. The Mayo Clinic and Rock Health have also invested in the company.
- Stride Health specializes in providing health insurance recommendations to people who are self-employed.
- Among other things, the new funding will be used to expand the company's mobile health coverage recommendation platform.
Dive Insight:
Stride is currently doing business in seven states—California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, Illinois and Pennsylvania—and is hoping to go national by the end of the year.
According to Tech Crunch, what Stride is offering is a "hassle-free alternative to Healthcare.gov." After customers enter their demographic data and medical information, Stride's forecasting model predicts healthcare utilization over the course of a year, prices it on every health plan, and couples it with the coverage price to allow users to compare the total costs for each plan.
Since healthcare coverage can be expensive for those who are self-employed and there are currently a large number of freelancers in the U.S., this service could go a long way to improving the overall number of consumers who have health insurance.