Weekly Health Tech Reads 9/20/26

SCAN Health Plan partnered with Walmart to launch a co-branded Medicare Advantage plan in two states. If you’re experiencing a sense of deja vu, join me, as this news is quite similar to the announcement a month ago that SCAN is partnering with Costco to launch Costco-branded plans in two states. The Costco partnership was in three markets with 5 million Medicare enrollees; the Walmart partnership is targeting markets with 2 million enrollees. Walmart is integrating its AI wellness and nutrition platform, Everyday Health Signals, into the offering. This marks Walmart’s third co-branded MA partnership announcement in the past six years, following a ten-year collaboration with UHG announced four years ago and before that, a co-branded health plan with Clover Health announced in 2020. Walmart has had a long history of attempting to enter the healthcare space with limited success. It is not immediately obvious to me what is different this go-around for Walmart (beyond the plan partner, but I will be curious to keep an eye on any signals that this relationship is developing differently.

Walmart also shared this week that it is piloting a new GLP-1-focused health coach role for pharmacists in six rural locations over the next six months. The role is broader than just GLP-1s, as it’ll also offer support for maternity and other conditions. Walmart noted that the role will have no prescribing responsibilities; it’ll just be there to support customers. I’d be curious to see the business case behind this rollout — it’s not immediately obvious to me how Walmart will make the math work of moving a pharmacist into what sounds like a health coach role given the relative salaries. I’m generally a believer that pharmacists have a really interesting role to play in the future of rural healthcare, although I’d imagine that generally revolves around expanding “top of license” roles for pharmacists, where this feels almost like the opposite.

Per Modern Healthcare, HCSC sent a notice to brokers on Thursday that it will exit several of its Medicare Advantage plans in 2027, affecting 6% of its membership. HCSC purchased Cigna’s Medicare Advantage business, along with CareAllies, for $3.3 billion back in 2024. It appears HCSC will be focusing more on HMO plan designs, as well as D-SNPs and C-SNPs, reflecting a trend we’re seeing more commonly in the market as plans prioritize profitable plan offerings.

Alignment Healthcare’s stock plunged over 30% this week, although it’s not quite clear to us here why. Alignment spoke at the Baird conference on Tuesday, with the headline being that it didn’t feel it was prudent to give any updates on the Stars plan period 1 window, noting that with everything going on in Stars, it doesn’t want to “poke the bear”, with the bear being CMS here. It seems the cut points will make performance harder in Stars moving forward, and so we will be watching closely when the data come out in mid-October, as perhaps the stock move this week is indicative of general market skittishness. That, or this is just the UChicago grad in me still trying to convince myself that markets are at least somewhat efficient.

Waystar is reportedly exploring strategic alternatives, including going private. It has engaged Evercore and Barclays to manage the process. The news drove Waystar’s stock up 8% on Tuesday, although it is still trading down roughly 30% over the last year. Waystar is currently trading at a $5.1 billion market cap, with analysts noting that this exploration isn’t a surprise given recent market activity in the RCM landscape. I’d imagine Thoreau would be at the top of the list for any banker here, given its recent investment in Ensemble (and as of Friday, Penelope, see below), coupled with its earlier aspirations to build a $30+ billion HCIT platform.

New Mountain Capital sold a “significant minority” stake in Datavant, a data platform for healthcare organizations, to two private equity firms, Neuberger and KKR. Recall that Datavant was expected to be one of the centerpieces of the $30 billion HCIT platform it originally envisioned acquiring from New Mountain.

Angle Health, an AI-native level-funded health plan for employers, raised $600 million at a $2.7 billion valuation. A European mid-market PE fund, Virtuvian Partners, led the round. The funding was $200 million of capital for the business and $400 million in a secondary offering. Angle serves 5,000 customers with plans available in 47 states, reporting 120% YoY growth and four straight quarters of EBITDA and GAAP Net Income profits. Angle reports median YoY rate increases for employers of 5% to 7%, compared to an 18% median increase that small and medium-sized businesses are generally facing. Angle appears to have roughly doubled its business since it last raised funding in December 2025, when it reported having 3,000 employer customers. It’s yet another indicator of the momentum in the employer market around alternative plan design concepts helping employers address cost increases.

Thatch, a platform for CHOICE (formerly ICHRA) plans, raised $108 million at a $1 billion valuation. Thatch reports having ~5,000 employers using its platform, while industry data suggests there are around 12,000 employers offering CHOICE plans. It’s worth noting the strategic partners in the round, including Eli Lilly, ADP Ventures, and Paychex, as Thatch has rolled out a new marketplace that helps employees spend their healthcare dollars on services like Lyra and Function Health. I’d imagine the underwriting case behind Thatch’s valuation views it as a consumer marketplace, much broader than the current CHOICE offering it has been focused on. In some ways, the narrative feels very similar to the business Oscar is attempting to build with Lucie.

Penelope, a platform that tracks payer policies, raised $100 million. Thoreau, Matt Holt’s infrastructure platform, led the round. The press release notes that Penelope will be part of Thoreau’s platform, which is attempting to build a real-time infrastructure layer for payments and clinical decisions. Penelope currently tracks policies from payers covering 200 million Americans, across 15,000 procedures and drug codes.

Nara Health, a TPA for small employers, raised $10 million. Khosla Ventures led the round. A customer quote in the press release notes that Nara helped a small employer (200 to 500 employees per LinkedIn) move from a level-funded plan design to a self-insured plan, with the employer noting that its benefits costs are down 55% YoY with this plan design, versus a 27% proposed renewal increase on the level-funded plan. It’s interesting to note the employer is saying their benefits cost is down 55%, and not that underlying medical expenses are down 55%. I’d be curious what is happening to the underlying medical expenses for employees and, assuming those aren’t down 55%, how this change is going over for employees at an organization like that.

Ferry Health, an AI-powered personal assistant for healthcare, raised $9 million from a group of investors. Given Instinct's recent success, I can imagine VC interest in funding models like this is sky high right now. Ferry, which launched in 2024, is focused on helping patients find and schedule appointments by automating calls to provider practices. Ferry notes it has partnered with health systems, health plans, and care navigation platforms, and that through these partnerships, over 1 million patients have access to Ferry. It expects that to grow 5x by year-end. As mentioned above, it will be fascinating to watch how quickly these personal assistants roll out for healthcare use cases.

I thought it was interesting to see the New York Times covering what must surely be a hot debate in DC about how HHS and other federal institutions are pacing the rate of clinical AI change internally. The article discusses concerns about the risks of AI in clinical care and notes the influence Silicon Valley appears to have on the federal government’s thinking on this issue. The article mentions that discussions have been underway within the administration about paying AI doctors 60% to 80% of what human doctors earn, which offers a clear glimpse into how the government might reimburse clinical AI in the future. It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where this moves forward pretty quickly once the FDA figures out how to regulate AI more generally.