Former Iora Health execs raise $13M to guide seniors through Medicare enrollment ' TechCrunch

Three options are usually offered by employers for healthcare insurance. There are more than 3,500 plans nationwide that can be used to get Medicare Advantage. An average of 30 plans in each area. Connie Health helps seniors navigate the Medicare maze and narrows down the 3,000 options to a few top choices, based on their care needs.Oded Eran (CEO), David Luna (chief revenue officer) and Michael Scopa (chief growth officer) were the co-founders of the company. They first saw this problem as executives at Iora Health, a primary care company that is being bought by OneMedical for $2.1 million.Their company was founded in 2019 in order to provide a Medicare concierge service that assists seniors in navigating the 30 plans and finding the best one.TechCrunch spoke to Eran, who explained that even though healthcare is provided locally, patients don't know the differences in local hospitals and the intricacies of local networks. Trust is essential for seniors. There are often local advisors available to help them over the phone or at their home.Boston-based company, Khosla Ventures announced Wednesday that it had raised $13million in Series A funding. Pittango Healthtech and Khosla Ventures led the funding. This gives it $16 million total funding. Khosla also led a seed round that raised $3 million for the company in January 2020. AbstractVentures and Dynamic Loop Capital participated in the Series A and seed rounds, along with a group angel investors that included Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg, founders of Flatiron Health, and Assaf Wand, CEO of Hippo Insurance.Kaul saw a huge market in Connie Health, with 55 million Medicare customers benefiting from major innovations in Medicare Advantage and value based care. Eran's team was particularly impressive to him, as was the ability of the company to launch during the pandemic while remaining agile.Kaul said that the Medicare Advantage market is rich and will continue growing. Technology has not played a significant role in this market, and Oded will bring technology to improve the efficiency of the market.Medicare Advantage is the private sector part of the insurance program. Eran stated that the government wants to encourage competition and innovation. This means there are many new players to offer more options, nuances, and help to manage costs better. This creates confusion at the consumer level, Eran said. Potential customers are often unable to make informed decisions about the best options available, so they stick with what is familiar.Connie Health is here to help. Connie Health's technology considers the provider and medications a person sees and what benefits they want. It then uses that information to build a model and find the most suitable plan for them.Connie Health launched its Arizona consumer platform four months ago and, with the new investment, began operations in Texas. Eran plans to move to Illinois in the next year. He is witnessing big demographic changes due to a lot more people moving into Medicare and other states. This new funding will allow the company to expand into other insurance products.The company's presence in these states grew to seven and the number of local agents grew by 150%.Eran stated that we are going to make it easier for people to access local agents in order to assist them with difficult decisions. Because healthcare is within the community, we are going market-by-market.