Oscar Health is seeing some favorable signs in the embattled individual market.
The company posted $4.6 billion in revenue in the first quarter of the year, up from the $3 billion haul it reported in Q1 2025. Its medical loss ratio also declined year-over-year, decreasing from 75.4% in the prior-year quarter to 70.5%.
Oscar also brought in $679 million in profit for the quarter, making for a notable increase from the company's $275.3 million haul in Q1 2025.
On the company's earnings call Thursday morning, CEO Mark Bertolini said that recent research from Wakely suggests that contraction in the exchanges is "tracking in line to favorable to our 20% to 30% estimate." Oscar had nearly 3.2 million members as of Q1, a significant increase from the prior year quarter's 2 million tally.
Chief Financial Officer Scott Blackley said that the 56% membership growth reflects both expansion in the open enrollment window and significant retention. He said that there was some churn through Q1 and the company opened the second quarter with about 3 million members.
He said that these trends "proceeded exactly as we expected."
The members who fell off the rolls in Q1 were largely individuals who had not made payments, and were likely not high utilizers of care, Blackley said.
He added that while it's still too early to have a full picture of the morbidity of its membership, the Wakely report had positive signs.
"It's very early in the year to draw conclusions about market morbidity, [but] we really are encouraged about the data that we saw in that report," Blackley said. "I would describe it as in line to favorable with our expectations."
Bertolini also offered investors a look at the thinking behind the launch of Lucie, a new marketplace shopping platform that the company unveiled in late April. He said that Oscar is hearing from employers that are interested in individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements, or ICHRA, but the options available may make it difficult to switch.
By combining not just Oscar's medical coverage but also health plans offered by other insurers as well as supplemental benefits, it offers far greater scale for employers to offer ICHRA to workers and ensure that they have a full suite of options to choose from.
Bertolini said that the company will provide a deeper dive into Lucie in September.
Beyond making it easier for employers to tap into ICHRA, leaning into that market offers a significant opportunity for margin expansion at Oscar, too, he said.
"It's another margin opportunity for us to grow the bottom line and the top line of the organization over time," he said.