Mark Bertolini
CEO, Oscar Health · 1 appearance on the record.
computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →
executiveoperator
Mark Bertolini is the Chief Executive Officer and Director of Oscar Health. He previously served as the Chief Executive Officer of Aetna.
40statements → 21claims → 14claims resolved → 21%fully supported → 4.05/5average certainty → 2.02/5average debate potential →
3 supported 8 partly supported 3 contradicted 7 not checkable as stated how the 21 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
21 assertions · 4 opinions · 10 insights · 5 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 21 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 14 are resolved, and 7 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Mark argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
Bertolini: 20% of Aetna's lowest-paid employee families relied on food stamps
“I want to know who these people are. I want to know what their life's like, how much they make, and it was about 12 bucks an hour, and they were, 81% were women, 20% of the kids were on foods, the families were on food stamps, 25% of the kids were on Medicaid …”
Their most notable contradicted claim
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet
Everything Mark Bertolini said on Invest Like the Best that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Bertolini: The US needs to eliminate employer-sponsored health insurance
“We need to eliminate employer sponsored insurance.”
Bertolini scheduled his own assisted suicide at Dignitas due to chronic pain
“I was getting ready to go to Switzerland to end my life at Dignitas. It's an assisted suicide organization, but I had to prove I had intractable pain. And pain that can't be cured. And so, I was sent to a doctor, and the doctor evaluated me, and the doctor sai…”
Bertolini: Oscar built the first new health insurance platform since 1972
“First new platform for health insurance that has been built since 1972. So everybody uses the old Health Edge platform. I've modified Health Edge three times in my career and was built in 72.”
Bertolini: Large employers resist ICHRA because it eliminates benefits departments
“There's going to be resistance at the large end employers. They have benefit staffs of hundreds of people. This person buys pharmacy, this person by dental, and they just manage the whole process. You don't need all those people when you give the money to the …”
Bertolini: Conflicting economic models make US healthcare structurally dysfunctional
“Physicians, 760,000 or so, all work on a cash basis. That's their accounting model. The hospital systems and the facilities that provide healthcare around the country work on a revenue basis. As long as I have enough revenue coming in, I can win. And then you …”
Bertolini: Aetna's overall healthcare costs fell 7.5% following corporate mindfulness programs
“Our healthcare costs went down. Not trend. The actual dollar cost went down seven and a half percent the next year.”
Bertolini: 20% of Aetna's lowest-paid employee families relied on food stamps
“I want to know who these people are. I want to know what their life's like, how much they make, and it was about 12 bucks an hour, and they were, 81% were women, 20% of the kids were on foods, the families were on food stamps, 25% of the kids were on Medicaid …”
Bertolini announced Aetna's minimum wage increase without prior board approval
“I was at the JP Morgan conference on January first, January second of 2015, and I announced it in front of 240 of our three hundred and forty million shares and said, we're going to do this. I didn't ask the board because they said, well, how did your board le…”
Bertolini: Entrenched culture and investors resisted management reform at Bridgewater
“The culture is so institutionalized in that organization that causing any changes at the management process level about how we work was really difficult. People wanted to operate the way they always operated. That was a bit of a struggle. Near wanted to make t…”
Bertolini: A person's zip code determines health far more than genetic code
“Your zip code is far more important than your genetic code. Where you live matters more than what you are.”
Bertolini: Leaders are only right about 35% of the time
“While I thought I was right a hundred percent of the time, I'm really only right about 35% of the time, but it's just the issue of making a decision and moving forward. And if you have a good management process around it will get better as you go along.”
Mark Bertolini: Employer health plans force workers into insurance they wouldn't independently buy
“So we now have employers who buy insurance for a large group of people providing a limited range of benefits that on average control the price of their, of that benefit without really looking at the individual requirements underneath and what people need. And …”
Bertolini: Oscar Health runs nearly two dozen LLMs to cut backend costs
“We have implemented over 20, almost, almost two dozen large language models on the back end of the business that have reduced our operating costs.”
Bertolini: 60% of lifetime healthcare costs occur at end of life
“What we found was, is that in hospice, end of life, where 60% of your lifetime costs are spent, Medicare rules, and most rules in most insurance companies require you to say, I can no longer seek curative services, and I have to give up hope.”
Bertolini: Aetna mindfulness trial dropped highest-stressed employee cortisol levels by 50%
“What we found is that the people in the highest quintile of stress spent 2500 dollars more a year on health care than the average employee. So we put everybody through these programs, we had them journal, and after 12 weeks, heart rate, variability, cortisol l…”
Bertolini: Spreadsheets are the worst invention ever created for business
“The spreadsheet is the worst invention ever created for business, right? If you read the book, The Terrorism of Excel or something like that, I put in that book. But, you know, we've created a tool that allows us to manipulate numbers on the page to get the an…”
Bertolini: Aetna's 90%-discounted soft wage benefits equaled all hard savings
“Let's take all the soft benefits, presenteeism, better attitude at work, empathy for our members. Let's put all those on a page and let's discount them by 90%. And so when we did that, the group that we discounted by 90% added up to the exact same amount of sa…”
Bertolini: Only difference between well-run non-profits and for-profits is taxes
“So the only difference between a for-profit and a not-for-profit that are well-run is the for-profit pays taxes.”
Bertolini: Doctor lost program leadership after keeping his son in intensive care
“Ava lost her role as the head of that bone marrow transplant program, largely because that cost that hospital a lot of money to have them in the hospital for a year and a half in an intensive unit.”
Bertolini: If You Aren't Spending Time on the Right Things, Run
“With that in mind, every day when you wear this ring, look at it and ask yourself, am I spending my time with the right people doing right things? And if you're not, run.”
Bertolini: Executing ideas is far rarer and more powerful than conceiving them
“Platonists are people who think the great idea, communicate it, and consider their job done. And then the Aristotelians actually have to translate it into real work. And I found that being an Aristotelian was far more powerful than being a Platonist. There are…”
Bertolini framed Oscar Health as a pirate ship raiding legacy insurers
“So one of the first things I said at Oscar is, We are a pirate ship filled with cannons among Spanish galleons filled with gold. All we have to do is take their business. They don't think we can succeed. We're too small. We have none of the ballast that they c…”
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| The CEO Who Cheated Death, Slept an Hour a Night, and Built a Healthcare Empire · Invest L | Aug 19, 2025 | 1h 20m |