About Verd
We are building the tool we wished someone had handed us: an honest, plain-English estimate of what a health plan will cost you for the year.
Verd is a private company, not affiliated with or endorsed by Medicare, Medicaid, CMS, HealthCare.gov, or any government agency.
Our Story
Verd began in a meeting with the insurance brokers' lobby. We were in the room, and we pressed them with the questions any consumer would want asked on their behalf: when you place someone in a plan, do you consider their healthcare needs? Their actual healthcare spending? Their age, their family, their circumstances? The answer, to each question, was no. They consider the plans the brokers are told to push. That is the industry — billions of dollars a year in commissions — standing between most Americans and one of the largest financial decisions of their year.
We left that meeting knowing what we had to build. If you have been through Verd's intake, you have already seen it: your health conditions, your medications, how often you actually use care, your household, your income, how much risk you can carry. That form is, almost line for line, the list of questions the industry told us it does not ask. Everything Verd does downstream — the projection, the ranking, the plain-English explanation of the tradeoffs — starts from the answers no one else wanted.
We are two health policy professionals who have spent more than a decade on how Americans get covered — Medicare, Medicaid, and the Marketplace among them — and on the public data behind it: CMS plan files and IRS subsidy rules. We have spent our careers trying to correct the failures of this industry. Verd is what that work looks like when it is built for one household at a time.
That is the standard we hold ourselves to. Marketplace prices in 30 states come from CMS's public plan file, subsidy rules come from IRS guidance, and every cost projection is an estimate built from what you tell us. We take no commissions from insurers, ever. We never sell your data. And we show our work: the math behind your number is on the page, in the same figures we computed, not behind a curtain.
Major changes to Medicare or the ACA get careful cost analysis before they become law. Individual Americans get a four-page plan summary and a few weeks to choose. Verd exists to close that gap — the same analytical discipline that informs federal policy, rebuilt for one household at a time.
Why You Can Trust Us
In this industry, trust has to be structural — not promised. Three commitments are built into how Verd works.
No commissions. No carrier partnerships.
We take no money from insurers, earn nothing when you enroll, and hold no carrier appointments. When a plan ranks first in your results, it is because the math says so — there is no other reason for it to be there.
Federal data provenance.
Marketplace prices come from CMS's public plan file (county by county in 30 states, national estimates elsewhere). Subsidy rules come from the IRS, Medicaid rules from each state, and the preventive-care checklist follows USPSTF recommendations. Public sources you can check, not proprietary industry data.
Your data is never sold.
Stored in your account and handled only by the service providers that run Verd (listed in our Privacy Policy). Never sold. Never shared with insurers, employers, or advertisers. Your health profile exists for one purpose: powering your own analysis.
Mission & Values
We believe no one should overpay for health insurance because the system is too complex to navigate. Every decision we make is guided by four commitments.
Data Over Assumptions
Marketplace prices come from CMS plan data and subsidy rules from the IRS. Your cost projection starts from age-band baselines and adds the visits, conditions, and prescriptions you report — and we say which is which.
Radical Transparency
Every recommendation shows its math. You see the premium projections, the expected out-of-pocket costs by scenario, the medication pricing breakdowns. If we recommend a plan, you know exactly why.
Universal Accessibility
The plan comparison is free. The kind of analysis a benefits consultant charges for should be available to a single parent in rural Ohio comparing marketplace plans at midnight.
Privacy by Design
You can see, edit, and delete your health data at any time. We never sell it, and never share it with insurers, employers, or advertisers. Our revenue comes from the value we provide to you, not from monetizing your medical profile.
How We Think
Insurance optimization is not a recommendation problem. It is a modeling problem. Here is how we approach it.
We Show Our Work
Every recommendation displays the math behind it — the premium projections, the expected out-of-pocket costs, the subsidy estimates, and the assumptions each one rests on. You see the same numbers we compute, in the same order we compute them.
Your Year of Care, Projected
Your projection starts from an age-band allowance for the care most people use without planning to, then adds what you tell us directly: doctor and specialist visits, emergency and urgent care, each chronic condition weighted by how much care it typically needs, and your prescriptions at your reported cost. Where you skip a question, we use the band's typical figure and say so on the results page.
Every Cost Component, Modeled
We model every component of plan cost independently: premiums, deductibles, copays, coinsurance, out-of-pocket maximums, HSA tax advantages, and prescription costs. Each interacts differently depending on your utilization scenario. Our engine resolves these interactions to produce total-cost projections that account for plan structure, not just sticker price.
Subsidy & Tax Optimization
ACA premium tax credits, HSA contribution limits, and cost-sharing reductions create a complex incentive landscape. A plan that appears expensive before subsidies may be the cheapest after them. We model the tax-adjusted cost, including income-based subsidy cliffs and HSA tax sheltering, to estimate which plan type best fits your finances.
What We've Shipped
Pro toolkit expanded to ten tools
Bill checking, appeals with deadline tracking, a savings ledger, an Rx watchdog, pre-appointment checks, life-event guidance, and a mid-year plan audit — plus a full 2026 federal data refresh.
Verd brand launch
Launched at verdhealth.com with the Verd Assistant and an advisory engine for assistance programs — Medicare Savings Programs, Extra Help, CHIP, and more.
Platform launch
Recommendation engine covering 12 coverage types, built on federal data.
Who's Building This
Verd is founder-led and growing deliberately. We hire for domain expertise, not headcount.
Alex & John
Verd was founded by two health policy professionals who have spent more than a decade on how Americans get covered — Medicare, Medicaid, and the Marketplace among them. They built Verd to put that experience to work for the people the system was supposed to serve — and they let the methodology speak for itself.
Growing Our Team
We're actively building our engineering and data science team. If you're passionate about healthcare, data, and building tools that matter — reach out through our contact form.
Growing Our Team
We're looking for people who understand healthcare policy from the inside — enrollment systems, regulatory frameworks, and the real-world impact of plan design. Reach out through our contact form.
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