When health care firms that haven't been around very long announce new venture-capital financing, it's hard to miss the big numbers.
This year, $225 million went into an East Coast health insurance firm called Oscar and an additional half a billion dollars of equity was just raised by Bright Health of Minneapolis.
These firms are very much still startups, and you can hear a little Silicon Valley-style language in how they talk about themselves.
Oscar claims to make health insurance simpler and easier to understand, yet it describes itself as "the first direct-to-consumer health insurer, pairing member engagement with our own full-stack technology."
Well, that does sound better than having half-stack technology.
But the bigger point is how it's at least a little surprising that upstarts can raise so much capital to jump into an industry with so many barriers to entry.
Health care is highly regulated, both nationally and state-by-state, and relies on a hopelessly complex payment system the incumbents have all mastered.
Scale matters, too, including the benefits of operating with a brand people respect when the stakes — health care and what it costs — are so high.