The Great Health Insurance Recalibration

I heard an analogy this week from a broker about health insurance versus car insurance. If we all bought car insurance that included coverage for everyday maintenance, like an oil change, ultimately that would drive up the price of that insurance. Meanwhile, in healthcare, we expect broad-based coverage but pay so much for it that people are avoiding encounters with hospitals and clinics, as much as possible. 

I’m increasingly of the mindset that with the rise of high deductible plans and experiments I’m seeing on the employer side with isolating a higher-risk group and providing a form of secondary insurance, as well as trends like ICHRA, that we might be moving into a very different future where car insurance and health insurance feel far more similar than ever before. The President has announced cheaper pricing for medications like GLP-1s for those on Medicare, while cash prices continue to come down. Patients are increasingly comfortable paying cash for generics and primary care. We will still need insurance if we get cancer or get hit by a car, but would pricing come down if the consumer, cash-pay system continued to grow?

Outside of mulling where healthcare is going, I’ve been contemplating for 2026 an invite-only, intimate, curated convening. And on that front, I’d love to hear from you. What themes are you interested in exploring? Who would you most like to meet with in person? And what are some of the venues that you’ve been to for events where you’d relish the opportunity to go again? I’m bullish on the idea that in-person is back, and find myself craving those moments of connection where I can turn off Zoom for a few days and learn from those around me. 

With that, our “four questions with” interview this week explores that very theme: What’s old is now new again. I sat down with veteran Chief Marketing Officer and friend, Brandon Young to discuss how Gen AI is transforming health-tech marketing teams, and making tactics once considered “old school” more relevant than ever. 

We’re watching the pendulum swing back from precision to presence. For years, healthcare marketers chased hyper-targeted performance tactics. But as paid channels saturate and search traffic declines, those marginal gains have vanished.

The most innovative teams are now investing in three things:

1) First-party audience intelligence AI tools have made ethnography cheap again. We can finally hear the human signal beneath all the data noise.

2) Cross-channel orchestration: not performance versus brand, but creative continuity across every touchpoint.

3) Narrative systems: cohesive story architectures that flex from the boardroom to the waiting room.

In short, we’re going back to the future: the art of brand building, but powered by machine-scale insight.

Most doctors have developed a kind of digital callus. They’ve been trained by years of online noise to tune it all out; ads on medical journals, pop-ups, etc. Even on social platforms, their footprint is minuscule; few have the time or inclination to scroll LinkedIn between patients. 

So the question isn’t how to get louder online, it’s how to reclaim their attention offline. One of the most effective things I’ve seen is surprisingly simple: send something physical in the mail.

Unfortunately, actually locating providers is trickier than it might seem because provider directories and data are notoriously bad. Have you tried calling the phone number for a provider in a carrier directory recently? In my role at Garner Health, we leveraged AI to bridge that gap and create a more accurate provider directory for our members, which gave us an advantage.

Physicians respond to substance. A short, evidence-driven note recognizing their quality or outcomes carries more weight than any retargeting ad ever could. They don’t want marketing; they want proof that someone sees the work they’re doing.

Welcome to the next episode of back to the future: hiring. For the last two decades, marketing’s been sliced into hyper-specialized silos. GenAI is the new hyper specialist. That most valuable hires are strategic generalists: systems thinkers who understand how all the pieces fit together and can leverage GenAI as functional advisors where they have subject matter gaps, and Agentic workflows to actually do the work.

Look at what the best-in-class tech product teams are doing: one exceptional PM is now able to prototype feature sets in a week that used to take engineering teams a few months.

If I were hiring early-career talent, I’d look for someone on a trajectory to be a chief marketing officer, who is already leveraging AI to build miniature marketing teams on their own: run insights, test creative, and analyze results.

Launching a digital asset now is much easier than it has ever been. Take a microsite for example, tools like Lovable turn what used to be an 8-week sprint into a day of work. You can get it 90 percent of the way there and test it in market the next day. Then iterating and hardening the solution once it gains traction and you have real, tangible feedback. I created a dynamic microsite comparing doctor performance by metro and specialty in an hour on a flight.

Why not leverage these tools in candidate interviews and give them 30 minutes with Lovable with a rough creative brief and set of requirements, and see what they come up with. Leave the details abstract enough that they need to fill in some gaps. Then, take 30 minutes in the second half of the interview to showcase what they built, and the why behind their decisions.

 If healthcare marketing were a color, it would be drunk-tank pink. 

Tech, for all its chaos, still remembers how to play to win: to take creative risks that make people feel something.

Healthcare marketers need to stop playing defense and just playing it safe to avoid getting fired. “Tried and true” has become “tired and timid.” In healthcare, marketing is too often relegated to a supporting and not a strategic function. To do that, we need more courage, more boldness. 

If you haven’t read it yet, Udi Ledergor’s book Courageous Marketing nails this concisely. The best marketers aren’t reckless; they’re brave enough to kill the bullshit. Step out of the corporate safety zone, talk like humans, show proof, take creative swings that might actually move the market, and god forbid, build something you’re proud of.

With Annalisa Merelli

The $149 a month obesity drugs

The news: Donald Trump said the administration has entered into a deal with Lilly and Novo Nordisk that would lower the price of their GLP-1 drugs to as low as $245/month for Medicaid and Medicare patients, down from $1,300, and in exchange have them covered under the plans. That also includes a monthly co-pay, and the pricing on the medicines vary. Oral GLP tablets - if approved - would cost as little as $149 per month. 

How it will work: It remains to be seen whether this effort to reduce pricing will impact commercial payers, who currently pay far more for the medicines – even with rebates. It has forced employers to make hard decisions about whether to cover GLP-1s for weight loss at all because the cost of healthcare is already sky-high for members, and only showing signs of increasing in 2026. 

Why it matters: The return on investment for a person losing significant weight on a GLP-1 is oftentimes still several years. That provokes bigger questions about why we have a system that ties health insurance to employment, when the average person stays in a job for less than 4 years. Tenure on Medicare plans tends to be much longer. 

The business purpose of GLP-1 microdosing

The news: Telehealth companies Noom, Found, and Hims & Hers have launched GLP-1 “microdosing” programs that claim to educate patients on metabolic risk, lower inflammatory markers, and even lower the risk of cognitive decline. 

The catch: There is no real evidence behind those claims, scientists say, noting that companies should be careful about the marketing. “Essentially these patients are guinea pigs, both on the efficacy side and the safety side,” Reshma Ramachandran, a Health Services Researcher and Clinician at the Yale School of Medicine told STAT’s Katie Palmer. 

The benefit: Marketing microdoses can increase profit margins for companies, expand the pool of patients using them, and extend the ability of compounding GLP-1.

Why it matters: The research is still underway and we need more of it, there’s no doubt. We’ve heard very disparate views on this. Some people in our network have pointed out that there’s probably far too much knee jerk criticism of people who endeavor to lose 10 or 15 pounds and may be overweight, versus obese. Those individuals may find value in microdosing, in addition to lifestyle factors. That said, overweight individuals may also be feeling immense pressure to use Ozempic and other interventions, Stanford Medicine researchers say, without properly understanding the risks. 

Hims & Hers and Novo Nordisk are talking again 

The news: After Novo terminated its direct sales deal with the telehealth company in June, talks are back on to sell Wegovy injections, as well as a new obesity pill. 

The market: After the breakup, Hims & Hers stock plunged 30%. The news that they may be getting together brought it up 6%. 

What Hims & Hers said: "Discussions are ongoing, no definitive agreement has been executed with Novo Nordisk, and there is a possibility that no definitive agreement may ever be executed with Novo Nordisk," read a statement.

Why it matters: As we note in our earnings breakdown via our intern Meredith Nolan, Hims & Hers is simultaneously expanding its offerings, including in areas like testosterone, all in a bid to attract scores of new users. Its revenue jumped $49% to $599 million this previous quarter. 

Ambience Healthcare launches Conditions Advisor: The new product is an AI solution to address the scattered nature of patient data and record, allowing physicians to get a full picture of their health, including secondary diagnoses. 

WebMD Ignite launched Pulse, an health focused end-to-end marketing solution allowing health systems to launch campaigns and obtain AI insight, monitoring, and guidance. 

Talkspace is partnering with Novo Nordisk’s WeGoTogether app, which supports patients taking GLP-1 drugs. Talkspace will provide group coaching and emotional support. 

Omada Health will offer prescriptions, starting with anti-obesity medications to address the needs of over 100,000 members already taking GLP-1 drugs.

$1.6 million for HoloMD: The clinician-supervised AI platform supporting psychiatric patients in between visits closed a first round on seed funding.

$100 million for Tala Health: Titan Holding announced the launch of Tala Health, which has raised a round of funding led by Sofreh Capital. The new company is valued at $1.2 billion. 

$126 million for Hippocratic AI: The company closed a Series C venture funding in a deal led by Avenir Growth, which places the company’s total valuation at $3.5 billion. The funding will go toward expanding patient facing AI-agents. 

by Meredith Nolan, our HBS intern

Him and Hers (HIMS) reported solid performance in Q3 with $599 million in revenue (+49%) driven by both more subscribers (2.5 million / +21% over prior year) and higher average monthly revenue per subscriber ($80)

Talkspace: Reported strong growth (+25%) driven by insurance-covered sessions, which offset declines in direct-to-consumer revenue. Looking forward, the company shared insights on its investments in AI, from eligibility determinations to “smart notes” and “smart evaluations” to building out its own proprietary behavioral health AI model. 

Hinge Health (HNGE) reported over 50% in revenue growth in its second quarter as a public company. The company achieved 53% free cash flow margin with its AI-first model and has ample capacity to pursue M&A and other investments. Management noted that it sees an opportunity to expand beyond physical therapy.

Omada Health (OMDA) posted its first post-IPO earnings, with a 49% revenue growth and an addition of more than 840,000 members compared to Q3 of 2024.