About Mark Bertolini
Mark Bertolini, CEO of Oscar Health, has been discussing the company's technology-driven approach to health insurance and advocating for changes to the U.S. healthcare system. In a May 2026 interview, he described Oscar as a "tech-first insurance company" that is "digitally native" with a single platform and data set, and stated that the company uses over 40 large language models and three agentic AI bots. He said Oscar operates solely in the ACA marketplace, covering about 3 million lives across 21 states, and noted that the company has reduced operating costs by a billion dollars while growing from 750,000 to 3.5 million members with the same number of employees. Bertolini argued that Americans are "fed up" with current coverage and that the shift from defined benefit to defined contribution models, such as ICHRA, will happen faster than the transition from pensions to 401(k)s.
In a February 2026 conversation, Bertolini criticized the current health insurance model, saying it "conflates financing with investment" and that healthcare is the most expensive household line item with no consumer shopping ability. He proposed separating financing from investment through Roth IRA-like HSA accounts, allowing individuals to buy networks and plan designs that fit their circumstances. Bertolini also discussed his personal experience as a caregiver for his son, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and said this informed his perspective. He highlighted a new platform called Lucie, which aims to create a shopping experience for healthcare, and noted that six states have passed legislation to support this model.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Mark Bertolini's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Becky Quick0:00
It's not just the supply problems and the system problems, but you mentioned that all of this is done with technology. And I have to say, the target audience for this right now, those age 65 and up, and you know, over this past week I was trying to book reservations for my mother-in-law who's in her 70s and some of her 80-year-old neighbors. I mean, 80-plus-year-old neighbors, it's not easy for them to try and maneuver some of those systems as well, which just makes you wonder what happens to people who don't have kids or grandkids to help them out with this.
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Mark Bertolini0:32
They're stuck. They're getting neighbors and they're getting friends, and we've been helping folks out here as well to try and get into the system. It's unfortunate. This is an opportunity where, for example, Salesforce in California is managing that system and distribution and is helping to connect reservation appointments, and you can see California is way ahead of most any state in administering vaccines to the population. So it's this idea of understanding where you need to supply, how to set up the appointments, and then I think another important factor, Becky, that a lot of people aren't talking about is the supply of people to do it. On a number of sites here in New York, they're asking people, 'Do you have medical capability? Could you sign up to come and help inoculate people?'
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Becky Quick1:26
So what's the fix again, Mark? These are all kind of long-term fixes and things that aren't going to be probably able to be papered over in the next month or two.
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Mark Bertolini1:36
I think some of the interesting projects going on here in New York City, so the armory up in Washington Heights now has 700 vaccine stations, people lining up, going through. I think we need to do more of that. I don't think the pharmacies in and of themselves will be enough. I think you see hospital and physician groups providing vaccines, but it's only for their patients. We need to have mass vaccination. We need to have big facilities. Part of the problem, I think, right, you know, the hospitals that have access to this, doctor's groups that have had access to this, have restricted it to only their patients, which creates, you know, its own sort of pecking order for who can get access to these things.
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Becky Quick2:23
It does. And then these reservation systems, again, they're all different. You try them multiple—I mean, you can sign up for appointments in as many places as you can get online and find one, which tends to jam up the system as well. So there's no coordination.
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Mark Bertolini2:38
But I think this is something that you can teach National Guardsmen. You can bring in nursing students. Teaching people to give inoculations is not that difficult. And if we do that and set up these mass vaccination centers, we can get the supply into people's arms. Because I think adding double the supply when we don't have the appointment availability, we don't have the technology to be able to get people in to get their shots, really creates a bigger problem in the longer run.
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Becky Quick3:12
When you start asking people when things are going to start looking much, much better, getting more of this rolled out, Anthony Fauci may say June, July, August. Dr. Scott Gottlieb has told us maybe April. What's your best guess?
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Mark Bertolini3:26
From the standpoint of availability, I think it's going to be the latter part of the second quarter. But I think from the standpoint of 75 percent of the American population inoculated, we're looking at nine months to a year based on these statistics, if things don't change at the level of distribution and providing shots.
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Shepard Smith3:46
Shepard Smith here. Thanks for watching CNBC on YouTube.
