Health insurance has changed. It’s unknown and scary, and quite frankly is oftentimes painful. In the wake of the Affordable Care Act, two health insurance industry experts from Indianapolis decided to pioneer the unknown by developing technology and launching a company entirely focused on helping small employers change from expensive, traditional group health insurance plans to affordable, personalized, managed individual plans. Founded in 2015, Remodel Health was formed by Scott Lingle and Justin Clements.
They built out the first version of their application, began quickly acquiring customers, and started assembling the team. The dream was beginning to become a reality. Then one day, they took a deathly blow in the form of big brands like UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, Humana and Cigna starting to retreat from the ACA marketplace, initially weakening the individual marketplace.
Not only did some of the most popular names in health insurance leave the market, but those who continued to participate stopped paying commissions–the core component of Remodel Health’s initial revenue. As founders, Scott and Justin thought it might be the end. They’d left their comfortable, high-paying jobs to build a business solving a huge problem for small employers. But in these moments, they were left asking, “How are we going to keep this struggling new business afloat?”
In the midst of all the bad-news and sleepless nights, Scott was sick and tired of paying $1,400 per month for his family’s Blue Cross Blue Shield ACA marketplace plan. He had been researching other options and learned about Christian healthcare sharing programs. After months of research, he switched his family from an expensive traditional insurance plan to a sharing program and lowered his monthly cost to $400, saving $1,000 per month.
At this point, Scott and Justin realized they may have just discovered the secret sauce for Remodel Health and understood its WHY. God had provided a way for continued growth and Remodel Health made a major pivot to focus primarily on churches and faith-based organizations.
As a result of the pivot, God has blessed Remodel Health in tremendous ways. In 2017 they threw a huge party with dozens of churches and pastors to celebrate central Indiana churches saving $1 million dollars annually – that’s $1 million more dollars back into Christian ministries in our own backyard.
In 2018, God continued to show his favor on Remodel Health through an official partnership with Brotherhood Mutual, a 100 year-old property and casualty insurance company serving nearly 60,000 churches. Their goal is to leverage Remodel Health’s benefits platform as their health benefits solution to continue serving many more.
Through all of this, we learned the importance of having a clearly defined WHY. Our original business model struggled and nearly failed, but we let God take the lead and the rest is history. By shifting our approach and focusing primarily on churches and faith-based organizations, we’ve developed a clear and compelling vision. Our continually growing team of rockstars is dedicated to serving our existing clients, as well as reaching more organizations to help them save money and find a better benefit solution.
So who is Remodel Health?
We are revolutionizing the way health benefits are delivered to employees and our mission is to help our customers regain and repurpose $1 billion dollars in resources.