People who want a more affordable alternative to catastrophic health insurance, especially:

-Small biz owners, self employed, consultants, gigsters, freelancers

-Athletes + Adventurers from skiers to rock climbers, dancers to cyclists

-Students

-Foreigners visiting or residing in the US

-Employees on high deductible health plans (aka catastrophic plan) who want a better alternative, either as a replacement or a supplement

-People wanting to quit their job and live their dream but are scared to due to the uncertainly around being able to pay for unexpected accidents

-People in between jobs

-Users of DPC (Direct Primary Care) who want to pair primary care with coverage just in case of a big unexpected medical expense

-Uninsured who want to have an affordable way to cover their asses!

Yes! CYA can be a supplement to health insurance. If your employee has an accident or critical illness, they can use their primary insurance and then get a cash payment from other CYA members. CYA can also further negotiate down whatever hospital bills remain after their primary insurance company covers its part. (Insurance companies typically deny 20% of claims so unfortunately there still may be plenty owed.)

We aim to provide a lower cost alternative to catastrophic health insurance that gives people the peace of mind they need to live exceptional lives.

Leveraging crowdfunding, we do this by building processes + technology that help members get cash payments from other members when they suffer unexpected accidents or critical disease that lead to costly medical expenses.

Group 1: If they are uninsured: get financial security in case an accidental injury happens that their medical costs will be reimbursed for.

Group 2: If they have insurance with a high deductible: get added financial security in case an accidental injury happens that the out-of-pocket expenses are reimbursed for (ie deductible, coinsurance, copay)

Learn more by reading our blog post.

Pay monthly membership per employee for them to be part of the community. Membership for the accidents plan is $38 / month. 100% goes to their own CYA Member account that’s earmarked for member donations until there is enough donations to pay members without external help. At that point we will split membership dues 50-50 between donations and running CYA.

If your employee has an accident that leads to Urgent Care, ER, Outpatient Surgery, or Hospitalization, submit a photo with anything that identifies their diagnosis on it, ie receipts, statements, prescriptions, or official documents. We verify that everything checks out, collect donations from their Member Account, and then send them a virtual debit card fully loaded with the specified amount ($200 Urgent Care, $5k ER, $10k Outpatient Surgery, $50k Hospitalization).

In addition, they can snap a photo of their itemized hospital bills and send via our app, and we will fight the hospital for deep discounts, ranging from 30-85%. Using technology and our team of passionate, trained bill negotiators, we will advocate for them until they make moves. We will also help them explore financing options if/when appropriate.

At the end of each month, any funds from their Member Account unused as donations to the community will rollover to the net month and gain interest.

Also at the end of each month, we will provide a monthly report of use of funds, including who was funded with as much (or little) detail as they are willing to share to the community. We completely respect privacy and members are under zero pressure or expectation to share their stories to the rest of the community.

See How It Works for more details

CYA studied this inside and out with an experienced team of medical payment experts to determine that $50k will pay for more than enough of a hospitalization for the vast majority of accidents. Based on studying medical claims data for 1.4 million Americans aged 18-50, the probability of you having an accident that costs more than $50k in a single year is 0.1%. Hence CYA is confident that $50k is a sufficient amount for accidents leading to hospitalization.

It’s also worth noting that $50k is up to 5x more than the average accidental insurance plan, which typically offers very limited coverage as a way of covering part of out-of-pocket costs due to health insurance deductibles, coinsurance, or just plain claims denials.

Further, if in the rare occasion $50k isn’t enough, CYA will both help members navigate financing medical bills as well as do another round of donation requests from members for the remaining amount.

No, otherwise regulators would consider us insurance which we’re not. Remember we are a crowdfunding members club! With that said, so long as your employees’ accident / critical illness is legit, we will 100% ALWAYS collect donations from the community and send your employees the detailed amount.

The monthly membership number (and amount earmarked for donations) is based on rigorous modeling and stress testing with medical payment experts to plan for even the most conservative, plausible scenarios. These scenarios are based on millions of data points from past hospital incidence rates and costs.

As we bring on more members, the risk of not having enough money in the community to back everyone else goes down significantly. In order to have financial backing up front to assist the community in the early days, we are partnering with investors to assist the community for the first 200 members. Our team of medical payment experts have run sophisticated models to determine this number. Once we reach our cap of 200 members, we will bring on more capital to bridge the community to self-sustainability.

-People with chronic conditions and pre existing conditions looking to replace health insurance for consistent medical coverage for procedures, specialty care, medications and more. While you can certainly still use CYA in addition to your health insurance for assurance around accidents and new critical illnesses, the CYA community does not currently offer cash payouts for chronic condition needs or pre-existing conditions.

-Employees who love their job, their company is paying for 100% of their health benefits, the benefits are awesome, and the experience is great. (How many of you are there out there??)

-People who want financial assistance for accidents while outside of the US

The security of Member Data is important to us. CYA stores and processes Member Data in accordance with industry standards and applicable law, including HIPAA, ensuring that Member Data is protected from unauthorized access, use and disclosure. Read our Privacy Policy for more.

CYA is a members club that provides financial support in the form of donations from other members and help negotiating hospital bills. The cash payments from CYA’s members is meant to not only cover hospital bills from an unexpected accident, but provide extra cash for debilitating accidents that will have ongoing medical costs that may prevent you from going to work.

Unlike traditional insurance, CYA employs a novel use of crowdfunding. We don’t centrally manage a pool of money, rather process pre-committed donations from members-to-member.

CYA is merely a coordinator and processor of the crowdfunding process. So, in a great sense, we are akin to a mutual aid society where members believe in assisting each other in paying for medical bills. None of the members’ funds are centrally collected or managed. All of the funds to assist members with medical bills stay with the members until it’s time to crowdfund for that particular request.