Oscar Just Did Something Nobody Saw Coming
When I first wrote about Oscar Health, the thesis was simple: the best technology platform in individual health insurance, sitting directly in the path of the most powerful structural shift in US healthcare policy in a generation.
Today the thesis got bigger. Materially bigger.
Oscar Health just launched Lucie Health Marketplace — and if you understand what this actually is, you will understand why I continue to hold Oscar as my largest position by a significant margin and why I am not moving an inch.
Let me explain what just happened and why it matters.
What Is Lucie Health Marketplace
Lucie Health is Oscar’s newly launched all-in-one healthcare storefront. In Oscar’s own words: the first marketplace that integrates all major individual medical carriers with trusted ancillary and supplemental leaders — medical, dental, vision, accident, hospital care, and more under a single consumer-facing experience.
This is Oscar positioning itself as the infrastructure layer of the entire individual health insurance market. Not just its own plans. All plans. Every carrier. Every product type. One storefront.
CEO Mark Bertolini put it directly: “Instead of being forced into a few rigid employer plans, you build your own custom bundle of affordable products for better financial protection. Your health plan. Your pharmacy coverage. Your dental plan. We are putting consumers in control so they can buy what fits their lives.”
This is the healthcare equivalent of what Amazon did to retail. Build the infrastructure, then operate within it as one of many providers. The platform earns regardless of which insurance product the consumer ultimately chooses.
Why This Changes the Math
Oscar’s existing business is already large. Record membership of approximately 3.4 million. Full-year 2025 revenue of $11.7 billion. 2026 guidance of $18.7 to $19.0 billion in revenue with $250 to $450 million in projected operating income — the return to profitability the market has been waiting for.
But Lucie extends Oscar’s addressable market beyond its own membership. As a marketplace, Oscar earns from every transaction that flows through the platform regardless of which carrier provides the underlying coverage. This is a fundamentally different and far more scalable business model than pure insurance.
And crucially, Lucie is one of only 11 CMS-approved enhanced direct enrollment platforms in the country. That is a regulatory moat most investors are not discussing. CMS approval is not granted quickly or easily. It took years to build and positions Lucie as certified infrastructure for federal health insurance enrollment.
The CEO Just Bought $11.9 Million of Stock
Mark Bertolini personally purchased 1,000,000 shares of Oscar at $11.92, a $11.9 million personal investment. That is a CEO who believes what he is building is significantly undervalued at current prices.
OSCR currently trades at approximately $16 with a market cap of roughly $4 billion. For a company guiding $18.7 to $19.0 billion in 2026 revenue with a path to operating profitability and now launching a marketplace platform that extends its addressable market to the entire individual health insurance ecosystem, the current valuation is the kind of opportunity that only exists during periods of maximum uncertainty and pessimism.
The Thesis Is Getting Stronger
Oscar has had a difficult stretch operationally. The 2025 MLR blowout from elevated ACA market morbidity was real and painful. The market has punished the stock accordingly but the business underneath that stock price is building something that a year from now will look very different. 3.4 million members. The industry’s best technology platform. The Oswell AI health agent. The ICHRA market-maker positioning that Oscar’s Janet Liang described at HLTH 2025. A 96-million-life addressable market if ICHRA adoption continues on its current trajectory. And now a marketplace platform that earns from the broader individual health insurance market regardless of whose plan the consumer ultimately buys.
The thesis was always that the technology moat and the structural tailwind would eventually be visible in the financials. 2026 is the year that begins to happen. And Lucie is the announcement that suggests the long-term vision is larger than most investors currently understand.
I continue to hold Oscar as my largest position. I am comfortable. The business is evolving in exactly the direction I expected, and today it took a step further than I anticipated.
That is a good day.
Thanks for reading!
FJ
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