Why health and wellness financing is broken

(Blog post written by our friends at Coeus Collective. They are a New York City based venture studio that uses media, events, and capital to help founders navigate the startup ecosystem.)

To understand why health and wellness financing is broken, it helps to step back and look at the scale of the system as a whole.

Americans now spend roughly $5.6 trillion a year on healthcare. That works out to over $15,000 per person, and it accounts for nearly a fifth of the entire U.S. economy. For context, that share of the economy has been growing steadily for decades, and it's on track to keep growing. According to the most recent analysis of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace, the average unsubsidized monthly premium payment rose to over $750 per month on average in 2026.

But there's a more specific problem buried within the healthcare system. Nothing about traditional health insurance is designed to reward you for staying healthy. Wellness measures like preventative care, physical therapy, supplements, and a consistent fitness routine that keeps you healthy do not move your premium. You can spend years investing in your own wellbeing and your insurance treats you exactly the same as someone who hasn't. The premium you pay is priced around risk and utilization, not around the behaviors that actually reduce both. Whatever you spend on staying well exists entirely outside the system you're already paying into every month.

The dysfunction of the healthcare system lands particularly hard on founders, freelancers, consultants, and small business owners. Without the negotiating leverage or cost-sharing of a large employer plan, buying coverage on the individual market means paying entirely out of pocket. For someone trying to build a business, that cost is a direct, painful hit to your runway every single month.

This is the specific gap ionava is built around. It's a total reimagining of paying for health; a way to make the health and wellness dollars you're already spending stretch further and actually count for something.

ionava as a different kind of answer

ionava is a financial platform that lets people convert their existing health and wellness spending into a source of financial growth, protection and reward.

As ionava's founder and CEO, Azar, put As Azar, ionava’s founder and CEO put it during one of our NY Tech Week events,

“ionava was built to feel like a lifestyle debit card that actually rewards you for being healthy, and still covers you for the ‘Big What-Ifs’ in life, which is what a lot of people are actually scared about."

The design is health-linked, meaning the better your underlying health is, the more accessible financially ionava becomes, conceptually similar to the way a strong driving record lowers an auto insurance premium.

Importantly, ionava is not framed solely as a replacement for the insurance you already have. As Azar explained, “a Vault can even be layered over your regular health insurance. It's not an either/or." For many, having that layer in place opens up key efficiencies in how they structure their overall health and wellness spending.. It allows ionavanss to use their plan on the bulk of day-to-day health and wellness spending that their regular health insurance doesnot support. Or, some ionavans may choose to try it as an alternative to health insurance all together.

That detail matters for the founders and entrepreneurs in our community specifically. If you're already paying out of pocket for a marketplace plan, the addition of ionava doesn't ask you to abandon that coverage. A Wallet and Vault can sit alongside that plan, redirecting some of your existing health spending toward something that builds value over time instead of disappearing into a premium.

Open Enrollment, and what's coming next

Open Enrollment is the once-a-year window when people can sign up for or change their ACA marketplace health insurance plan. Miss it, and you're generally locked into your current plan (or lack of one) until the next cycle, unless you qualify for a special exception. The next Open Enrollment period opens November 1, 2026, for coverage that begins in 2027.

That window matters more this year than most. With premiums having already risen sharply in 2026, the expectation is that costs will likely continue climbing into 2027. For founders and freelancers weighing their options, the months before November are a crucial window for decision making.

Ready to explore ionava? A great place to start is taking your Health Score or meeting our team at one of our events.