Even if you have insurance to cover the cost of your health care, understanding and managing it can still be a nightmare. You go the the doctor or get a procedure or lab test and typically have no idea what it will cost. A bill arrives, but you still don't often know how much you owe and how much the insurance company will pay. Eventually the insurance company mails you an "explanation of benefits," but even that can sometimes be indecipherable.
Enter Simplee, a free online personal health care expense management system. Like a Mint.com for health care, the service accesses data directly from the web sites of major health insurance companies and then presents the information to you in a user-friendly manner that makes it clear how much was billed, what the insurance company will pay and what you're expected to pay. Data is scraped from your insurance company's Web site so you don't have to enter it, but you do have to provide Simplee with your insurance company sign-on credentials.
You can use the service for multiple accounts and multiple family members and quickly understand your deductibles as well as "hidden" insurance benefits like free checkups that you may not even be aware of.
The service, according to CEO and co-founder Tomer Shoval, complies with federal (HIPPA) privacy laws.
Click below to listen to Larry Magid's interview with CEO Tomer Shoval.
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