Health Tech Nerds Radio

Kevin and Martin open with a wild AI story: a personal-assistant app is now negotiating discounts with telehealth vendors on users' behalf, opening up some genuinely strange territory around bots negotiating with other bots.From there it's Oscar's Investor Day: Bertolini's pitch that the individual market is a $350 billion opportunity, the ICHRA/Choice and Lucie marketplace ambitions, and whether any of it holds up against a shakier ACA market and skeptical brokers. Then Alignment Health, down 35% this week during CMS's Stars blackout, and OpenEvidence's confusing week — a $250 million raise at a lower valuation than they reportedly turned down over the summer, plus a surprise pivot into drug development.Quick hits close the show: Thatch's $108 million raise, Walmart's new Scan partnership and pharmacist health-coaching pilot, and RCM moves at Waystar and Datavant.Brought to you byLorikeet is a leading platform health tech companies use to build, test, and deploy AI concierges for patient and provider support. lorikeetcx.ai/healthtechLinks referencedForbes article on OpenEvidence's $250M raise and Memorial Sloan Kettering partnership: https://www.forbes.com/sites/innovationrx/2026/09/16/a-premier-cancer-hospital-makes-its-data-available-to-doctors-nationwide-through-openevidence/For more from Health Tech Nerds, subscribe to our weekly newsletters: https://www.healthtechnerds.com/subscribe

Kevin and Martin open on where autonomous clinical AI actually stands post-ARPA-H awards and the Zeke Emanuel conversation. They then discuss whether employer-sponsored insurance is nearing its end — Julie Yoo’s "Great Health Plan Replacement" thesis, Surest, and the CrowdHealth risk-pool debateNext, they dig into Omada's inaugural investor day: the PBM-as-channel go-to-market strategy and updated margin targets now at 80% gross and 30% adjusted EBITDA. From there, InnovAge's Q4 earnings — the company is planning a growth era following two years spent fixing operational issues in California and Colorado, with CEO Patrick Blair flagging unusually strong federal interest in expanding the PACE model beyond dual eligibles.Private markets stay busy: Fullscript's buyout by L Catterton (with a Thorne/P&G footnote), Thyme Care’s $125M round and new "Thyme Companies" parent entity, Forus’s $150M specialty-pharmacy raise, a senior-living round for Inspiren, and Epsilon Health's radiology raise.Brought to you byLorikeet is a leading platform health tech companies use to build, test, and deploy AI concierges for patient and provider support. lorikeetcx.ai/healthtechLinks referencedConversation with Zeke Emanuel: https://www.healthtechnerds.com/p/autonomous-ai-and-the-future-of-clinical-care-an-expert-interview-with-ezekiel-emanuel-md-phdJulie Yoo on The Great Health Plan Replacement: https://a16z.com/the-great-health-plan-replacement/Omada Investor Day presentation: https://investors.omadahealth.com/static-files/fbe637ba-7eba-40d3-8829-761b670be4e7For more from Health Tech Nerds, subscribe to our weekly newsletters: https://www.healthtechnerds.com/subscribe

This week's Grand Roundup is a replay of last week's Health Tech Nerds company presentation: Kevin sits down with Leah Sparks, CEO and founder of Wildflower Health, for a look into the maternal health and women's health market.Leah walks through Wildflower's model — a digital and AI-enabled wraparound care layer that fills the gaps between OB visits for pregnant and postpartum patients, working across payers, providers, and now, following its recent acquisition of Every Mother, direct-to-consumer. She shares two case studies (a retained-placenta catch and a self-harm intervention routed through 988) and the metrics behind the business.The conversation turns to the upcoming unbundling of the global prenatal fee and what it means for cost variation, employer spend, and value-based care. Kevin and Leah also get into the Medicaid-versus-commercial "it can't scale" myth, the case for D2C in maternity care, and where the postpartum journey (and Wildflower's involvement in it) actually ends.Brought to you byGarner uses industry-leading analytics to identify the best-performing doctors and reimburse employees when they see them, helping over 2.5 million people find better care at lower cost. Explore careers with Garner. GarnerHealth.com/careersApply to attend Differential, an invite-only gathering for 100 of the most promising early-stage health tech founders and builders. differential.healthtechnerds.comFor more from Health Tech Nerds, subscribe to our weekly newsletters: https://www.healthtechnerds.com/subscribe

Kevin and Martin are out this week, so TGR is running our Q2 earnings wrap-up with HTN's Sean Leimbach, covering the quarter across the HTN Research coverage universe.First up: AI. Centene's Sarah London gave what Kevin calls “the quote of earnings season” on the risk of spending big with no return, while Astrana pointed to a 210 basis point G&A win and Doximity's stock jumped 30%. From there, it's managed care's comeback: Humana as the sector's bellwether, Centene retreating from markets while Alignment and SCAN (teaming with Costco) push for share, Medicaid MCOs landing rate wins, and Molina stuck in its own little mini death spiral on ACA risk transfer.They also cover a run of confusing stock reactions to beat-and-raise quarters, the employer health boom behind Hinge, Omada, and Virta (plus Hinge's Cylinder acquisition), Hims CEO Andrew Dudum's Squawk Box pitch for a Bluetooth pill box, and Teladoc's BetterHelp cash-pay cliff. They close on hospital softness and ACA headwinds heading into 2027.Brought to you byGarner uses industry-leading analytics to identify the best-performing doctors and reimburse employees when they see them, helping over 2.5 million people find better care at lower cost. Explore careers with Garner. GarnerHealth.com/careersLinks referencedThe WSJ piece on healthcare as an "AI hedge”: https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/healthcare-investing-is-now-an-ai-short-in-disguise-104cb020Kevin’s interview with Amit Shah, Virta Health: https://www.healthtechnerds.com/p/building-a-durable-metabolic-care-business-in-the-glp-1-era-virta-health-company-presentation-and-qAndrew Dudum's Squawk Box interview: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/08/18/watch-cnbcs-full-interview-with-hims-hers-ceo-andrew-dudum.htmlFor more from Health Tech Nerds, subscribe to our weekly newsletters: https://www.healthtechnerds.com/subscribe

Kevin and Martin open on employer health: Bloomberg is asking staff to contribute to health insurance premiums after years of covering 100%, and a new survey shows small employers fleeing the big-three PBMs for centers of excellence and advanced primary care. Then they discuss Aligned Marketplace's $20 million raise and an HRA Council survey showing ICHRA lives roughly doubled year over year.They also talk about a Yale preprint claiming Medicare for All would save a trillion dollars a year — but nobody's grappling honestly with what that means for access and quality.There are lots of private market updates: Pearl Health's admin cost, a STAT investigation into Commure's Athelas unit over referral deals that raise kickback questions, Main Street Health's 533% growth, and Cityblock's new Humana partnership in North Carolina.They close with Hims & Hers earnings, where gross margin slid from 76% to 64% amid a shift to branded GLP-1s, and a managed care quarter where both the shrink-and-focus insurers and the grow-at-all-costs insurers somehow both won.Brought to you byGarner uses industry-leading analytics to identify the best-performing doctors and reimburse employees when they see them, helping over 2.5 million people find better care at lower cost. Explore careers with Garner. GarnerHealth.com/careersLinks referencedNational Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions survey: https://www.nationalalliancehealth.org/news/employers-with-claims-data-access-take-more-action-on-healthcare-costs-national-alliance-survey-finds/HRA Council survey on ICHRA covered lives: https://hracouncil.org/report/Milliman/Society of Actuaries report on DPC cost savings: https://www.soa.org/globalassets/assets/files/resources/research-report/2020/direct-primary-care-eval-model.pdfYale School of Public Health preprint on Medicare for All: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.22.26358689v1STAT investigative reporting on Commure/Athelas: https://www.statnews.com/2026/08/12/inside-commure-athelas-mad-dash-automate-health-care/Thursday’s live Q2 public markets recap: https://luma.com/3bw3xhq3For more from Health Tech Nerds, subscribe to our weekly newsletters: https://www.healthtechnerds.com/subscribe