Last week, we raised $108M to build a healthcare system people love. Today, we’re sharing why. We believe people should have more choice in how their healthcare dollars are spent. We call this awakening the Health Consumer.

Thatch CEO @chrisellisdc says healthcare has the wrong incentives because your insurer doesn’t have to win your business, your employer already chose it for you: "The problem is there's no penalty for denying a claim. If you're working at a company that offers a health plan and your claim gets denied, who are you petitioning to? You don't get to change the insurance. It's decided for you by your employer." "In a world where consumers choose and you have an experience, whether it's customer service, a claim denial, or another issue, if you have an experience that's really bad, you could just switch. You're no longer locked into a single carrier." "It's that ability to switch and an ability for the consumer to express their preference in an open market that is what ultimately changes the shape of supply in that market." "Our long-term vision is to reorder the incentives around making consumers happy. When people make consumers happy, carriers, pharma firms, everybody will make more money, and it will be a win-win for everyone." @thatch_ai

Today, we're announcing @thatch_ai raised a $108M Series C at a $1B valuation from @thegp, @IndexVentures, @generalcatalyst, @a16z. The idea we're betting on: healthcare serves whoever controls the dollar. For 80 years that's been the employer. We think it should be you. Employers typically choose one health plan for everyone. We think there's a better model: give people a health budget and let them choose the insurance and care that fits their life. That is the idea behind Thatch. ARR has grown nearly 7x in the last twelve months, and more than 5,000 employers now use Thatch. None of this happens without our team, or without the employers who believe that their people know what their families need better than they ever could. We're building a healthcare system people love by changing how we fund it.

If you're a software engineer in healthcare, I bet you that we're going to be your favorite. Ship It is our new software engineering conference for healthcare. It's all workshops, you need to apply to get in so we only get serious people, and it's limited to 80 people. You can apply with a workshop idea you'd want to run! Some things I think would be good: 1) How are people budgeting and allocating for tokens 2) Wtf are harnesses and how do you use them well 3) How are you evaluating other AI tools as vendors vs. when you want to build internally But you can pitch whatever you want! Applications are due Wednesday, we'd love to see you there. We know how to throw a good conference that's actually educational, just ask anyone that's wearing a gender reveal colored bucket hat who's been to one

The American healthcare system seems hopelessly broken. It is not. Just as a small quirk in the tax code shifted retirement plans from pensions to 401(k)s, ICHRA can shift insurance from employee-sponsored to individual choice. A Deep Dive on healthcare, ICHRA, & Thatch: