To your health: Nazemi, Schlosser, and Kushner roll out their consumer-friendly online insurance company.

Photo by Bruce Gilbert

For aspiring entrepreneurs searching for a sexy start-up idea, it may not seem a very glamorous notion. But ask Josh Kushner (MBA 2011), Kevin Nazemi (MPP/MBA 2011), and Mario Schlosser (MBA 2007) and they have just one word for you: insurance. The trio are cofounders of Oscar Health Insurance (hioscar.com), their brand-new online company—competing with more than a dozen other health insurance firms—that offers coverage on the New York Health Benefit Exchange.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (September 4, 2013), a customer's online account presents "a Facebook-style timeline of your interactions with doctors, pharmacists, hospitals, and so on. Clicking one icon will refill your prescription. Click another and you are connected with a 24-hour-a-day physician consultation service." The three men—who have experience with tech companies such as Instagram, MakerBot, Microsoft, and Vostu, which Kushner cofounded—are backed by $40 million in venture capital. Said Nazemi, who first flashed his entrepreneurial chops as a sixth grader when, for a school project, he scored a 25-minute interview with President Bill Clinton: "The basis for starting Oscar was that we looked at existing offerings and simply thought that consumers deserved a lot better."

Post a Comment