Medicare Market Insights
Medicare Market Insights
Enrolment & distribution · Aug 6, 2026
AEP 2027 Expected to Bring More Plan Terminations and Service Area Reductions →
“carriers will continue prioritizing profitability over membership growth heading into AEP 2027. The newsletter's 'Tea Leaves' section flags another year of higher-than-normal plan terminations and service area reductions as the likely outcome.”
Medicare Market Insights, Medicare Market Insights · Aug 6, 2026
Tally’s read
Q2 2026 financials signal a second consecutive year of elevated plan exits and service-area cuts as carriers choose margin over scale. Plan operators can now treat footprint contraction as a durable market condition rather than a one-year correction, prioritizing county-level profitability audits before bid submission. This cuts against any thesis that the retreat cycle is nearing its floor.
The Roster
Who we read on this market, and what each of them is good at.
6 writers, changed deliberately and noted in the changelog when it changes.
Jeff DelVerne The Healthcare Economy
Payer earnings
Pulls the numbers out of Big Six payer calls and says which ones the guidance actually rests on. The best quarterly read on MA margin available.
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Blake Madden Hospitalogy
Provider–payer strategy
Reads deal flow for what it says about bargaining power. Strongest when a transaction is being explained badly by everyone else.
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Kevin O'Leary & Ryan Russell Health Tech Nerds
Market structure & vendors
Weekly Health Tech Reads tracks who is entering and exiting each layer of the stack, with an unusually low tolerance for vendor narrative. The reference for what plans are actually buying.
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Nikhil Krishnan Out-of-Pocket
Payment mechanics
Explains how the money actually moves and why the incentive produces the behaviour. The reference for anything involving risk adjustment plumbing.
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Payer Perspectives
Plan operations
Written from inside the operating problem. The closest thing on this list to a plan operator's own view of the week.
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Medicare Market Insights
Enrolment & distribution
County-level enrolment work that usually arrives before the trade press notices the pattern.
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