Function Health

I’ve got gold standard PPO health insurance at UCLA Health and have over 10 years of labs. I love my doctors but for years they would say “let’s keep an eye on that high cholesterol or high A1c” instead of really addressing the results. Plus, when I asked for certain labs they said they couldn’t order them because insurance didn’t support them. Well, Function does all the labs and then some so you don’t have to see 5 different docs (general, heart, gyno, etc) and Function provides thoughtful analysis and recommendations for each result. Then, you can take said analysis to your doctor for further discussions if needed. It’s awesome and life changing. I now game my results to see what I can hack. It’s made healthcare actually fun. I feel like I have more control. Thanks, Function 💪

Function seemed like a good service, but I don’t like how they run the membership system, so it leaves me questioning the good intentions of everything else they do. I was especially upset when they automatically renewed my yearly membership for $499 on Sep 22: when I realized what they had done, I asked to cancel on Oct 9 (only 17 days later), but Function kept $169 of that membership fee, stating it was to “help support the systems, resources, and member services”. Seriously? I booked no testing for this renewal year, and I imagine that the renewal itself was automated, but if not, I can’t imagine that the renewal and charging of my card cost Function $169 worth of anyone’s time. What made it worse was that I wasn’t told what the refund would be until after I cancelled. They’re taking advantage of a lack of transparency and it’s going to come back and bite them. I’ll be looking for a better service that’s more straightforwardly fee-for-service, with none of these unreasonable hidden-in-the-fine print fees.

I bought some additional tests (genetic) as well as their basic panel. 1. They don’t provide a receipt that you can submit to insurance. Mine was rejected because it didn’t have the correct documentation. Impossible to get this fixed because of complaint #3. 2. There is no way to determine what blood test result is for which panel ordered. For months now I have asked for a way to know this and they said come back when we are open. Now they are telling me they are too busy and will email me. When? Who knows. It’s a total scam. They don’t have people working from them. It’s all automated and if the bot can’t answer the question there is no one else available to help. I spent a few thousand dollars on a test and haven’t been able to get clear results for it. 3. Trying to schedule appointments is very difficult if you add any extra tests onto your panel. You have to do a blood test visit for each thing you order on different days. 4. You have to go to the medical request form in the receipts section to find out what date the displayed bloodwork was measured on. The app just shows a level per test number. When you need the blood tests for other things they need the date of the panel. I’m not in the medical field reading the lab documents is very confusing. Don’t use this product! It’s a complete ripoff.