Healthcare IT · Revenue cycle management
Clearest Health
A New York startup that pitches AI-assisted appeals to help independent medical practices recover money on underpaid out-of-network claims. It started life in 2023 as a health benefits idea under two other names before settling on its current pitch in November 2024.
What the pitch is
Clearest Health sells itself to independent medical practices as a way to fight back when an out-of-network insurance payment comes in low. The company's own description: it is “an AI-enabled revenue recovery platform for independent healthcare practices with underpaid out-of-network claims,” working through “verified IDR benchmarks, claim analysis, and audit-ready dispute support” to help providers use the No Surprises Act's dispute process, known as Independent Dispute Resolution, or IDR.
The No Surprises Act, in force since 2022, bans most surprise out-of-network bills and routes unresolved payment disagreements between a provider and an insurer into a federal arbitration process. That process is exactly the sort of paperwork-heavy, deadline-driven administrative task that AI-claims software has targeted across the revenue cycle management sector, a crowded field that already includes large, funded competitors.
A third-party aggregator that tracks the company describes its marketing as emphasizing “pricing intelligence, audit-ready disputes, and a 48-hour free analysis,” and says Clearest Health claims to have built “the largest database of real IDR outcomes in the country” and trains AI models on those results. None of that database, its size, or its accuracy has been independently verified in any source found for this profile.
Two engineers, a rebrand, and a rebrand again
Nicolas Raga is from Maracaibo, Venezuela. He studied electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley, then worked at Amazon in Seattle. On his personal website he wrote that he “built stuff on Kinesis Data Analytics, then worked on the infrastructure for their search LLM,” and fixed bugs in Apache Flink. In 2023 he left to start the company with Y Combinator. His Y Combinator founder bio adds that he “also spent some time building core features for AWS's real-time data streaming service called Kinesis Data Analytics.”
His co-founder is Omar Mihilmy, listed in company data as CTO. No independent profile or interview with Mihilmy was found; what is known about him comes from directory listings that pair the two names as co-founders since the company's 2023 founding.
The company did not start as a claims-recovery tool. A startup name-change tracker shows the pair operating in 2023 and through mid-2024 as “Mano Claims,” with the tagline “Provide better health insurance by automating claims with GenAI,” then renaming to “Mano Health” in September 2024 with the tagline “Handcrafting the future of benefits administration,” before renaming again to Clearest Health on November 10, 2024. As late as mid-December 2025, an archived version of the company's own providers page still carried a leftover reference to “Mano Health's news,” a sign the rebrand was not fully scrubbed from the live site more than a year after the name changed.
Raga's own account folds the whole run into one line: “In 2023 I quit to start Clearest Health with YC. We help doctors get paid by insurance companies. It's a mess of a problem and I love it.” His site does not mention Mano Claims or Mano Health by name.
What the company says about itself
The company's about page describes a small, YC-connected team working out of Manhattan. It states three values: “We aim to change the narrative around insurance, fostering trust and strengthening customer relationships,” a commitment to put “customer trust and satisfaction above all else,” and a focus on “proactive solutions are designed to reduce long-term costs and enhance the overall customer experience in the insurance industry.” The same page opens with a plainer line: “We love to build, experiment, and improve how health benefits are administered,” a phrase that still echoes the Mano Health era positioning even under the new name.
Job listings posted through Y Combinator's Work at a Startup board show Clearest Health hiring across engineering and other roles in New York, with one listing offering $150,000 to $250,000 and 0.50% to 5.00% equity for a role requiring 3 or more years of experience, evidence the company has been actively building out a team, though headcount itself is not independently confirmed.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Y Combinator | Listed as a Y Combinator company, Summer 2023 batch (S23), per the company's Work at a Startup listing ID. | Independent |
| SEC Form D | Zero results in SEC EDGAR full text search for “Clearest Health,” “Mano Health,” “Mano Claims,” or “Nicolas Raga” as of Sep 25, 2026. | Public record |
| Funding raised | One data aggregator lists “$2.8M total raised, Seed” with investors not named. A separate data aggregator lists the company as “unfunded” with no funding rounds. Neither is backed by a press article, and no SEC filing corroborates either figure. | Conflicting aggregator data |
| Revenue and team size | One aggregator lists implausible revenue of “$100 to 850M” alongside a listed headcount of 1 to 10 employees, and an address in Farmingdale, NY that does not match the company's stated Manhattan office. Another lists 11 employees as of mid 2026. These figures are not consistent with each other. | Unverified |
| IDR outcomes database | Company claims the “largest database of real IDR outcomes in the country.” Not sized, dated, or otherwise substantiated in any source found. | Company-stated |
| Named customers | None found. No case study, testimonial with an attributable practice name, or press mention of a named client. | Not found |
| Press coverage | No independent news article, trade publication story, or interview about Clearest Health was found in web searches conducted for this profile. | Not found |
Read plainly: what can be confirmed independently is that Clearest Health is a real, YC-backed company with a small team, run by an identifiable founder with a verifiable Amazon and Berkeley background, that has changed its name and its stated product twice since 2023. Everything about its scale, its funding, its claimed database, and its customer base comes only from the company or from data aggregators whose numbers do not agree with each other.
What to watch
- Whether an SEC Form D is ever filed, which would put a real number on any round raised.
- Whether the company names any provider customers or publishes a case study with attributable results.
- Whether the leftover “Mano Health” references on the live site get cleaned up, and whether the product positioning shifts again.
- Independent press coverage of the company or its IDR outcomes claims.
In their words
“I'm the CEO and co-founder of Clearest Health. Before starting Clearest, I worked on the distributed training infrastructure for Amazon's LLM models. I also spent some time building core features for AWS's real-time data streaming service called Kinesis Data Analytics.”
Nicolas Raga, CEO and co-founder, Y Combinator company page · Company-stated
“In 2023 I quit to start Clearest Health with YC. We help doctors get paid by insurance companies. It's a mess of a problem and I love it.”
Nicolas Raga, personal website · Founder-stated
“I care a lot about who I work with. I'd take a small hard problem with the right people over a big easy one any day.”
Nicolas Raga, personal website · Founder-stated
“We love to build, experiment, and improve how health benefits are administered.”
Clearest Health about page · Company-stated
“We aim to change the narrative around insurance, fostering trust and strengthening customer relationships.”
Clearest Health about page · Company-stated
Related companies
Sources
- IndependentClearest Health company page and Work at a Startup job listings
- Public recordSEC EDGAR full text search, “Clearest Health,” “Mano Health,” “Mano Claims,” “Nicolas Raga”
- IndependentClearest Health name and tagline change history
- IndependentClearest Health company profile
- IndependentMano company profile
- IndependentClearest Health company profile and funding snapshot
- IndependentClearest Health funding and revenue snapshot
- IndependentClearest Health trust and pricing profile
- FounderNicolas Raga personal website
- CompanyClearest Health about page
- CompanyClearest Health providers page
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
