Striding with 20/20 vision

When we launched Stride Health three years ago, we focused on delivering a single great experience for our members: simple, personalized health coverage recommendations for independent workers.

Since then, our benefits platform has expanded to include tax & expense support with Stride Drive, custom-built dental plans, pharmacy discounts, preventive care plans, and a nationwide marketplace of every single health insurance option available to independent or self-employed workers.

I’m excited to announce our latest addition: vision insurance, built for independents.

Independent workers tend to drive their cars more and engage customers face-to-face more than desk-jobbers like me—whether they’re realtors, independent salespeople, caregivers, or rideshare drivers, millions of America’s self-employed workers use their eyes to earn their living.

And we know the delivery women and men who work using our partners TaskRabbit, Uber, Postmates, GrubHub, Seamless, Instacart and DoorDash have their eyes glued to the road—or their work—all day long. Health coverage ensures that you can get affordable treatment for a traumatic eye injury or disease, but doesn’t cover routine eye exams or the daily necessity of prescription lenses to keep our eyes sharp.

A whopping 75% of Americans need vision correction—including myself—and going without vision coverage negatively impacts not only the health of our eyes, but also our work. Without insurance, we miss optometrist visits and fail to get corrective lenses. We get tired eyes and headaches, dragging down our energy and productivity. Trust me, I’ve been there.

Unfortunately, when you work on your own, vision insurance can be expensive and unaffordable. It’s not like getting freebie coverage from your employer: most self-employeds with vision coverage spend over $200 per year on it and don’t get much in return. But you shouldn’t have to compromise your vision (or your wallet) to chase your independent career.

To solve this headache for our workers, Stride designed a custom VSP vision plan to support anyone who works independently. Stride consistently delivers better coverage at a lower price, and today we set a new bar: we cut the price nearly in half while delivering easy access to better benefits with VSP, the #1 name in vision care.

With today’s launch, Stride members now have exclusive access to:

• The lowest premiums: plans start at $9/month and cost half as much as if you buy without Stride
• Free contacts & glasses: members receive a $120 annual allowance for new contacts or glasses
• Nationwide quality network: access to VSP’s curated network of over 31K vision providers
• Simple enrollment: it takes less than three minutes to get covered!

We also refreshed the look of our product and added features to distill complex insurance jargon into simple and actionable information. With Stride’s VSP Plan, we’re continuing to chip away at delivering personalized coverage, care, and financial support to the Americans who need it most.

Whenever you’re ready to invest in keeping your eyes healthy, you can join Stride and get access here: https://www.stridehealth.com/vision/.