Thanks for the well wishes! We believe that the timing component is really important, and there is evidence that the winds of change are blowing right now. Would love to learn from your experience.
Whew... Loaded question ;) I understand where you are coming from. One way to look at it is that in the world that we currently live in there is much to be done to increase transparency and affordability. One of the statistics that propelled us to work on this problem was a survey that showed almost half of Americans avoid or delay care despite illness or injury because they don't know the cost. By at least starting that conversation about finances up front we hope to alleviate a lot of those fears, and the good news is that about 5% of patients have responded to our partners with messages saying "I can't afford this." and 100% of the time we have been able to connect them to a payment plan or to charitable funds to help them get the care they need. To us that seems better than not having the conversation and sending people to collections when they could never have afforded the service to begin with.
It's definitely not perfect, and there are many that are suffering, but we do feel strongly that our solution is a force for good in the current environment.
Only about 9% of the population is "literate" when it comes to health insurance. There are definitely some super users out there who can find tools and use them, but for most of the population we need to provide simpler tools and more straightforward explanations on their benefits and costs. That is where we come in.