Give the new guy a shot

This week I was quoted in a national Bloomberg story about the health insurance co-ops created by the Affordable Care Act. Regardless of your thoughts (or my thoughts) on healthcare reform, I think you can appreciate the reasoning for my family deciding to give business to CoOportunity Health (bold emphasis mine):

In Windsor Heights, Iowa, 35-year-old Geoffrey Wood, the chief operating officer of Startup Genome, said he signed on for the state’s co-op, CoOportunity Health, because he had grown tired of dealing with his previous insurer, Aetna Inc.’s subsidiary Coventry Health Care Inc.

“Given the choice between them, as the incumbent company, and an innovative company trying to do something different, I didn’t feel like I had much choice,” Wood said in a telephone interview. “I decided to give the new guy a shot.”

Cynthia Michener, an spokeswoman for Hartford, Connecticut-based Aetna, said Coventry’s advantages for enrollees include experience with the Iowa health-care system and stability. She declined to discuss Wood’s case without authorization from him.

“Coventry Health Care has served Iowans for more than two decades, and knows the community and its health-care needs well,” Michener said in an e-mail. “We have long-standing experience of providing health insurance and benefits and helping members access care, and a track record of financial stability to pay claims.”

Side note - this is my favorite part of the story: "She declined to discuss Wood’s case without authorization from him." Oh, so dramatic. There is no "case" (to my knowledge) to be discussed.