Myong Lee’s parents already had Medicare Advantage coverage. That was part of the problem. They had insurance, yet using it meant working through translators and dealing with people who did not understand their culture. Lee described the experience when Clever Care raised its Series A in 2020. The gap he noticed was between possessing a health plan and feeling comfortable enough to use one.
- Medicare Advantage coverage built around language and cultural familiarity.
- Conventional medicine alongside plan-specific acupuncture and Eastern wellness benefits.
- Neighborhood centers that give an insurance company a front door.
The problem was already at home
Health insurance has a peculiar vocabulary. Even fluent English speakers can stumble over a formulary or prior authorization. Add a language barrier and the conversation gets harder before anyone discusses a symptom. Lee’s observation was that translation alone left something unfinished: the patient still needed providers who understood familiar habits, expectations and ways of describing illness.
With Dave Firdaus and Hiep Pham, Lee helped create Clever Care. The three founders came from managed care, bringing experience in the machinery of insurance. The company dates its origins to 2018. Its first member coverage took effect in January 2021, after California licensing and a Medicare contract. The answer to a family frustration required building an actual insurer.
“My parents are Korean immigrants and are Medicare Advantage patients, each on their own plan.”Myong Lee · April 2020
Today, Clever Care serves Medicare beneficiaries across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties. Its proposition connects hospital and physician coverage with multilingual support and Eastern wellness benefits. People choosing a plan are also choosing a network, a set of rules and the people who will explain them.
A health plan with a front door
Consider the Westminster community center on Bolsa Avenue, in Little Saigon. At its October 2023 grand reopening, the photograph shows balloons, a ribbon and lion dancers. Inside, the service was practical: English- and Vietnamese-speaking advisors, Medicare seminars, yoga, tai chi and talks with doctors. The company also offered connections to food banks, mental health resources and other community programs.
Clever Care now lists centers in Koreatown, Monterey Park, Westminster and Rowland Heights. Their calendars include monthly birthday celebrations with refreshments. An insurance company remembering birthdays is a charming detail. The more useful point is that members have somewhere to ask an ordinary question in person, before it grows into a bewildering administrative problem.
The same attention appears in retail partnerships. Through TS Emporium, Clever Care expanded a supplement catalog to include goji berries, red dates and white lotus seed. Certain eligible members could also use grocery benefits there. A spending allowance becomes more useful when it works at a shop the customer already knows. That is a design decision other businesses can copy.
Read the benefit, then the small print
Clever Care sells Medicare Advantage HMO coverage and chronic-condition special needs plans. Breathe+, introduced for 2026, targets qualifying lung disorders, including asthma and COPD. Total+ serves eligible members with specified chronic conditions. These products sit in a crowded Medicare market, where the meaningful comparison is the whole package: doctors, drugs, costs, support and supplemental benefits.
The details deserve attention. The 2026 Total+ summary describes routine acupuncture with a $2,000 annual allowance and unlimited visits within that allowance. It separately offers up to 24 Eastern wellness services, including cupping and other therapies. “Unlimited visits” does not mean an unlimited budget. The annual spending ceiling remains part of the benefit.
Two distinct limits. Read the plan’s Evidence of Coverage for the full rules.
A $0 monthly plan premium, available on advertised plans, also needs context. Members generally still owe their Medicare Part B premium. Other cost sharing can apply. HMO members ordinarily use a contracted network, with exceptions such as emergency care. Benefits vary by plan and year. A member whose preferred physician is outside that network may find a different coverage arrangement more useful.
The business model explains how a plan can charge no additional monthly premium. Medicare pays private Medicare Advantage insurers a monthly amount for each enrolled member. The insurer arranges covered care and manages the costs. Clever Care’s culturally familiar service sits inside that regulated financial structure. It still has to make the insurance economics work.
For someone comparing options, the useful next step is concrete. Clever Care’s provider directory allows searches by language, specialty, location and whether a clinician accepts new patients. That makes the cultural promise something a prospective member can investigate. A familiar name on a brochure matters less than an available appointment with the right person.
The capital behind the conversation
Building this system took substantial financing. A $20 million Series A followed $6 million in seed funding. A Series B exceeding $71 million arrived in 2021. In 2023, Clever Care announced a $42 million Series C led by GV, reporting $138 million in cumulative capital. Those figures describe money raised, rather than the amount spent or proof of profitability.
Partnerships help fill out the offering. A CareMore agreement beginning in January 2026 added access to more than 350 primary care providers across three counties. Teladoc supplies virtual medical and mental health visits. The insurer’s expertise lies partly in assembling these relationships into coverage that members can navigate, rather than delivering every service itself.
Keep the neighborhood as you grow
Karen Walker Johnson became permanent CEO in March 2025 after serving as interim chief. In October 2026, Clever Care announced a 4.5-star CMS rating for 2027. That gives readers a formal quality signal alongside the company’s account of its member experience. It does not, by itself, establish which individual part of the model caused the result.
On October 15, Clever Care reported more than 55,000 members and announced two additional chronic-condition plans for 2027, Total Choice+ and Breathe Select+. Growth puts a new demand on the original idea: more people must still be able to find the right clinician and understand the answer they receive.
Its member advisory board supplies feedback alongside local events and community engagement. That creates a way to hear what people value beyond enrollment season. The practical test is whether those conversations keep influencing what members can buy, who they can see and how easily they get help.
The useful lesson is precise. Start with an observed difficulty, then follow it through the service. For Clever Care, language reaches into provider contracting, benefit design, retail access and physical locations. The model depends on enough local clinicians and members to support it. Its most portable insight is simpler: an offering becomes easier to use when it fits the life someone already has.