For job seekers, assurances of generous perks and benefits carry the most weight when those benefits are usable and grounded in lived experiences. Real outcomes quickly determine the value of those benefits.
Perhaps no benefit holds more weight for the workforce than healthcare, where our most vulnerable moments can end up costing us the most — and the safety nets we count on to sustain us often prove unreliable.
At Nibble Health, providing a truly usable and reliable healthcare safety net is central to its mission. It’s why the company built a platform that makes medical costs manageable by breaking bills into small, interest- and fee-free increments, helping employees pay for high deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses not covered by insurance.
For Co-Founder and CEO Steven Greene, this underlying goal is personal. Despite having insurance, Greene’s wife received an $8,000 bill after a two-hour hospital visit for pneumonia.
“Stories like that happen in the United States every day at an unimaginable scale,” explained Greene. “Half of the country is currently deferring medical care because of cost, and while we’ve gotten used to paying for consumer goods in installments over time, healthcare financing as an industry hasn’t evolved in 30 years.”
Moments like these — where unexpected physical or mental affliction meets unprecedented financial burden — are common, scary and overwhelming. But this moment helped form the foundation for what Nibble Health would become — and what its team seeks to prevent by providing businesses and employees with a new approach to healthcare benefits.
What’s your role? What are your responsibilities?
I’m Steven, the Co-Founder and CEO of Nibble Health. I run our sales, operations, marketing and finance teams here.
What is the problem Nibble Health wants to solve?
Basic healthcare is wildly unaffordable in the United States. It makes employees avoid interacting with the healthcare system altogether. Armed with our own terrible experiences paying for care, we began to ask: “What if we could allow people to pay for medical bills over time and at no cost to them — no interest and no fees? Could that not only change how they approach making healthcare decisions, but also save large enterprises a ton of money in the process?”
I had spent my career at the intersection of finance and digital health, and after some initial discovery, my co-founder Phil and I dialed in on the idea of using financial services to change how people access and afford care.
“We dialed in on the idea of using financial services to change how people access and afford care.”
What is Nibble Health’s core product? How does it help employees?
Nibble is a financial safety net offered by companies to their employees. When offered as a benefit, we allow employees to pay for medical expenses in small installments over time. They no longer have to worry about questions like, “Do I have $3,000 in my bank account right now to deal with my deductible? Can I afford the care I need?” — because we front the money on their behalf. They can then pay us back in “small bites,” which costs them nothing: no interest or fees ever. It’s completely free for the employee to use.
For employees, we want to remove cost as a barrier to care. If we can empower people to get the care they need when they need it, we can prevent them from developing chronic diseases and spiraling into financial distress.
Why would an employer offer this? How does it compare to existing benefits offerings?
Most companies offer benefits that are wildly expensive versus the ROI they generate, are a pain to implement, require tons of resources and don’t actually get used by employees. We talk to companies all the time that spend months integrating benefits that end up only being used by a small subsegment of their workforce.
Nibble is redefining what it means to be an impactful employee benefit. By giving employees a deductible safety net, we empower them to select high-deductible health plans, which are up to 40 percent cheaper for both the employee and the company. That’s immediate, real ROI that goes straight to the employer’s bottom line.
We also directly promote financial wellness — Nibble is free capital to pay for healthcare — and as inflation persists and healthcare costs increase exponentially, the need for real financial wellness solutions are growing by the day.
Lastly, we require zero employee or employer contribution, the Nibble Card can be used anywhere Visa is accepted and we don’t do individual credit checks, which promotes diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging at companies. This is a blanket healthcare safety net that, on day one, can be used by anyone for anything they have to pay out-of-pocket. It prevents people from falling through the cracks of their benefits suite.
There are also no technical integrations for the HR team to manage and the employer takes no credit risk. We can get a company up and running in a couple of days.
Why does your team’s work matter?
Very rarely do you get a chance to play a critical role in solving a generation problem. We have the opportunity to redefine a massive industry, build an important business that impacts people around the country and use our unique business model to do it at scale.
If we get this right, we will have upended a multi-hundred-billion-dollar ecosystem that affects people in the most personal way. It doesn’t just matter to us. It matters.
“If we get this right, we will have upended a multi-hundred-billion-dollar ecosystem that affects people in the most personal way. It doesn’t just matter to us. It matters.”
What are your goals for the next year?
We’re live with an initial cohort of employer groups and are focused on providing world-class service to our customers and their employees. For employers who want to stand at the cutting edge of employee health and wellness, we’re standing by as a new resource and plan to add many more folks to the platform this year.
Separately, we’ve always viewed healthcare financing not as the end-all-be-all of our business, but as the cornerstone around which we can build a suite of services that help employees navigate accessing and affording care. We’re calling it a “New Front Door” to paying for healthcare in the United States. Look out for some exciting product roll-outs from our team as we execute that vision of fundamentally changing the way employees pay for their healthcare
