About Meraz
Built inside a real Medicare agency.
Meraz Health Insurance Agency is a Medicare-focused agency of licensed agents. The Plan Comparison Tool was born from years of sitting across the table from real clients and running into the same challenge, appointment after appointment: how do you make complicated Medicare plan information easier to understand, compare and explain?
Built from a real problem
Decoding had become part of the job.
A Medicare appointment should be about the client — their doctors, their prescriptions, their budget, their priorities. But the plan information an agent works from is spread across long official materials, and each one structures, groups, words and prices things its own way. The same kind of benefit can read completely differently from one plan to the next.
The agents weren't failing — the workflow was working against them. Those materials each serve their own purpose, and none of them were designed to be one side-by-side comparison. So searching, translating and mentally reorganizing plan information followed agents into every appointment. Decoding the information had simply become part of the job.
Illustration — the same kind of benefit as four plans might present it: different names, different groupings, different pricing structures. All plans and sample language are fictional.
The kits
Before the software, there were the kits.
Every carrier printed its plan materials as booklets — kits, the agents called them. Comparing plans for a client meant carrying bags, sometimes whole cars, full of them, then laying several out side by side and flipping between pages mid-conversation. It was simply how the job was done — and it was cumbersome, heavy and hard to compare cleanly.
Illustration — the kits: one printed booklet set per carrier, drawn generically. No real carrier materials are shown.
The documents
Then the job became digital.
The booklets became PDFs — Summaries of Benefits and Evidence of Coverage documents. Search made finding a single detail faster, but a comparison still meant many documents open at once, each with its own structure and terminology, and the agent doing the translating. The workflow became digital. It did not yet become consistent.
Illustration — the digital era: official plan documents as searchable PDFs, searched one at a time. Document names are generic; the search is fictional.
The grids
So we built the comparison we needed.
Meraz agents started building comparison grids in Google Sheets: reading the official documents, pulling out the benefits clients actually ask about, normalizing everything into consistent categories, and keeping a source database that linked each figure back to its plan information. Building the grids for a plan year could take roughly two months.
And the grids were a hit. Agents relied on them in real appointments, where clients could finally see plans side by side in one consistent structure. They solved a real problem — and exposed a new one: plans change every year, so every year the grids had to be rebuilt.
Illustration — the internal grid: every plan normalized into the same rows, each figure linked to official source material. Values are fictional.
The product
The workflow outgrew its cells.
Paper kits, then documents, then researched grids — each era faster than the last, all proving the same workflow. Eventually the grid deserved better than spreadsheet cells, so Meraz turned it into the Plan Comparison Tool: purpose-built software around the comparison its agents had already proven. Easier to maintain, search, update and verify — consistent by design, and ready for every new plan year.
Built by agents, for agents
Shaped by real client conversations.
The format comes from how Meraz agents work across the table — the questions clients actually ask, the numbers an agent needs mid-conversation. Agents use the tool every day, and what they learn keeps shaping it.
The operating principle
The tool organizes.The agent advises.
Software never chooses a plan, and it never replaces professional judgment. The Plan Comparison Tool clears the clutter out of the way — the licensed agent does the advising.
Human service still matters
Education first. Relationships first.
Meraz has spent more than a decade helping people understand and compare Medicare, and software doesn't change that. The agency still explains first, so clients make decisions they actually understand — the tool exists to support that service, never to replace it.
Spend less time decoding. Spend more time advising.
See the product for yourself — or reach the Meraz team directly.