HealthCare.com Gets a New CEO

What You Need to Know

Don Loonam previously ran an insurtech company that was acquired by Prudential.
HealthCare.com sells other companies’ products and is developing its own.
It works with outside agents and brokers.

HealthCare Inc. has brought in Don Loonam to be its CEO and Bryan Lewis to be its chief financial officer.

The firm — which goes by the name HealthCare.com — says it’s hoping the executives will help it expand its insurance distribution and insurance manufacturing operations.

The New York-based company started up in 2014. It now sells major medical insurance policies, Medicare plans, supplemental health insurance policies and other types of insurance products with help from a network of about 12,000 outside insurance producers.

The company’s Pivot Health division works with outside organizations to develop proprietary supplemental insurance products and programs.

Howard Yeh, HealthCare.com’s co-founder, who has been the CEO, will become the chief operating officer.

Jeff Smedsrud, another co-founder, will continue to be president of insurance services.

The New Executives

Loonam, the new CEO, previously was chief operating officer of Assurance IQ, a company that helps consumers with health wellness and financial wellness products and services.

Prudential acquired the company for $3.5 billion in 2019.

Loonam earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He started out as a sales executive at Washington Mutual, and as a sales and marketing executive at AccuQuote.

He was the CEO of AcademixDirect Inc. from 2015 through 2018, before heading to Assurance.

The Future

HealthCare.com is bringing in high-level executives as the administration of President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress are starting to develop health coverage policy initiatives.

Some Democrats in Congress have been strong advocates for a government-run, single-payer health care system that would replace major medical insurance and outlaw the sale of most forms of supplemental health insurance.

Biden has repeatedly said that he intends to build on the current U.S. health finance system, not replace it.

The hires at HealthCare.com are an example of a health insurance organization proceeding on the assumption that some form of private health insurance will continue to exist in the United States.