Idaho exchange part of big success story for Silicon Valley tech firm

BOISE – The successful launch of Idaho’s new health insurance exchange website is part of a big success story for a Silicon Valley tech firm that’s providing the software through a $37 million contract, and also working with exchanges in California, New Mexico and Mississippi. GetInsured, headed by two tech entrepreneurs with a history of successful startups, formed as a private insurance exchange company in 2005, then got into the state exchange business after the Affordable Care Act passed; it beat out companies 10 times its size for the New Mexico contract, which is worth $39.9 million. Idaho’s paid it $26 million so far; the project’s on budget and on time. “It was a great implementation,” said company spokeswoman Andrea Riggs, in Palo Alto, Calif. “It went very smoothly. … It’s a testament to the power of software as a service and the platform that we’re using.” The company’s co-founders, Chini Krishnan and Shankar Srinivasan, both have two-decade track records in the high-tech industry. Krishnan, the CEO, earlier played a key role in an innovative secure browser released by Enterprise Integration Technologies, and his last company, Valicert Inc., went public in 2000 and merged with Tumbleweed Technologies in 2003. Srinivasan, the chief operating officer, served as vice president of eBusiness services at JP Morgan Chase, co-founded CyberBills, and was a member of the founding team behind WebMD. The two launched GetInsured in 2005 with a mission to make shopping for health coverage easy. “We’re here to help our customers ease their worries and take care of their families,” the company says on its website. “They’re both brilliant technologists,” Riggs said. “They’ve both had a lot of success creating user experiences with technology.” The company’s approach provides a form of “off the shelf” software that state exchanges can use. “We saw a better way to do it, rather than these large custom implementations that tend to be the norm,” Riggs said. GetInsured is a subcontractor to Accenture for the California health insurance exchange contract, which totals $359 million. In Mississippi, it’s handling a small-business exchange, something Idaho hasn’t yet launched. It also got a small-business exchange up and running in New Mexico in just four months. GetInsured now has 500 employees, a figure that’s tripled in the past five years. Under its contract with Your Health Idaho, after design, development and implementation, the company is in charge of maintenance and operation of Idaho’s site through December of 2018.