How Oscar Health is taking on legacy players to bring innovation to health insurance — with Mario Schlosser

These days, insuretech is its own burgeoning startup ecosystem. But in 2012, a startup elbowing into a space dominated by big longterm players like United, Humana, Cigna, and the Blues was audacious and unheard of. Enter Oscar Health, the health insurance startup that’s been pushing the envelope, exploring ways technology can improve the experience. For today's HIMSSCast, Oscar CEO Mario Schlosser joins host Jonah Comstock and Healthcare Finance News Managing Editor Susan Morse to tell his story and answer some questions about the company's latest moves. Along the way we discuss telehealth, value-based care, and more.

Be sure to check out Mario next week at the HIMSS State of Healthcare event on June 15th, where he'll represent the payer perspective on a panel of healthcare experts.

Talking points:

• What makes Oscar’s full-stack approach to technology different
• Differentiators: Automation, virtual primary care, +Oscar
• Major factors driving trends in healthcare
• How COVID boosted the virtual primary care business
• How Oscar overcame (and overcomes) healthcare’s first-mover curse
• ‘Shifting the battlefield” toward value-based care
• Driving Oscar towards profitability
• Oscar’s relationship with Cigna, and with other payers
• Moving toward the frontier of risk-based payments
• Why telemedicine and value-based care need each other
• The Catch-22 of risk-sharing in healthcare
• The emerging “orthogonal” healthcare system
• The last mile in telehealth
• Increasing provider interest in being in the health plan business

More about this episode:

With $400M injection, tech-savvy health insurer Oscar eyes 1M member mark (from 2016)

Alphabet's $375 million in Oscar Health will expand insurer into Medicare Advantage business (from 2018)

Oscar's new program aims to give providers and third-party payors access to its tech-backed insurance platform

Cigna, Oscar plan to expand affordable coverage for small businesses in Connecticut

Oscar launches no-cost virtual primary care in planned 2021 expansion

Tech-minded insurance company Oscar Health announces IPO

Health insuretech company Oscar scores $225M in new funding

Oscar lands $140M more as it prepares to scale in 2021