Standalone telementalhealth continues to be generously funded. Grow Therapy’s $150 million Series D brings their total funding to $328 million and their valuation to $3 billion. Their combination of in-person and telehealth visits with clinicians and psychiatrists is targeted to health plans, employers, and health systems. In-network plans include Humana, Cigna, UnitedHealthcare and Aetna. The fresh funding will be for expansion to the employer benefits market, within health systems for integration with primary care, and additional advanced AI tools. Grow claims that in 2025, they facilitated seven million visits, for a total since inception of 10 million therapy and medication... Continue Reading
Search Results for CVS-Aetna merger
Must Read: an excellent analysis on Carbon Health’s bankruptcy–and the Ominous Parallels
...started to pursue multiple lines of business without a solid track record on their main lines as it gobbled up smaller companies. It started to go sideways as early as 2020, it repeatedly failed in high profile pilots with major healthcare organizations, parts were sold off, then the remainder sold by IBM by July 2022. Most of it still does business as Merative, maintaining a very low profile. Carbon started to fail in 2022 as the pandemic tide receded, their overextension was revealed, and their growth plans collapsed; despite buckets of cash extended by CVS and other investors, it was... Continue Reading
Chutes and Ladders w/o 9 Feb: Biofourmis’ ex-CEO faces 7 major Singapore fraud charges (updated), Doximity’s 17% drop; Devoted Health’s big $366M raise, Garner Health garners $118M, Synthpop’s $15M Series A
...health that took over Biofourmis’ business in in-home delivery of complex care for health systems, payers, and pharmaceutical companies. It was announced by CopilotIQ. This oddity didn’t square with other financial reporting indicating that Biofourmis was the acquiring party, yet was reasonable considering that CopilotIQ’s CEO and his management were running the combined company. Yet Biofourmis was a much larger company, a unicorn with over $400 million acquired in 10 rounds of financing. Another oddity: Mr. Rajput transferred his 96.6 million shares (!!) in Biofourmis to 19 existing investors immediately prior to the merger, according to filings with ACRA, Singapore’s... Continue Reading
Chutes & Ladders: UnitedHealth’s disastrous day and industry portents; Sword Health buys Kaia for $285M and gains German entry, $250M Series D for OpenEvidence, Pomelo’s $92M Series C, NOCD buys Rebound Health
...recovered about 11% today to close at $294.02. UHG’s stock drop was the 6th worst since 1987’s Black Tuesday. The rule changes also swatted other insurers with major MA markets such as Centene, CVS Health (Aetna), Elevance, and Humana. Congress is also going hard after health insurers, with hostile House Ways and Means committee and House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearings last week skewering CEOs from UnitedHealth, CVS, Cigna and Elevance over their compensation, rampant vertical integration with pharmacy benefit management (PBMs) and providers (including rate setting), prior authorization, and care denials. Fun fact: non-insurance business can be as much... Continue Reading
Editor Donna’s selective roundup: One Medical’s Amazon Rx kiosks, VillageMD sells off Texas, digital health investment’s Q3 boost
Amazon keeps trying to integrate healthcare and make One Medical work, using Pharmacy as leverage. Like CVS, Walmart, and Walgreens, Amazon succumbed in 2022 to the Gold Rush of buying up a health clinic network and attempting to integrate primary care delivery into its retail model–after stumbling badly and failing with Amazon Care (2019). While the former have either ditched (Walmart), pivoted (CVS–Oak Street), or spun off their primary care providers (Walgreens–VillageMD/Summit Health), Amazon is testing yet another integration with One Medical, their first being with Amazon Prime. In its latest tweak, Amazon is delivering limited onsite pharmacy services via... Continue Reading
Need to knows: Omada’s $158M IPO at flat valuation, AZ lawsuit on Centene plan’s ‘ghost network’ fatality, UHG shareholders OK reduced package for CEO Hemsley, new ASTP/HIT-ONC leader, NJ’s Cooper Health patient data breach, Net Health buys Limber Health
...of $339,000. Whether he will enjoy all of this based on 2024’s disappointing performance is not disclosed, as he resigned effective 13 May 2025 after Q1 results and a suspended forecast for 2025 were disclosed. Runner-up was Karen Lynch, who departed CVS Health last year but with a comp package of $23.4 million. FierceHealthcare 2 June, 12 May Short takes: The Trump Administration has named Thomas Keane, a software engineer and interventional radiologist, as Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy, formerly the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). According to his ASTP bio, Dr. Keane previously served in... Continue Reading
Two other views on UnitedHealth Group’s annus horribilis, for your consideration
...Medicine and Stanford Graduate School of Business), and Dr. Adam Brown (emergency physician and founder of healthcare advisory firm ABIG Health). Mr. Gottleib focuses on UHG attributing its challenges to Medicare Advantage issues such as increased utilization. Yet other major insurers are stating they anticipated this and it’s trending about how they expected. He believes that UHG will manage their way out of this, much as (smaller, less complex) CVS Health apparently has, which was looking at a breakup in October 2024. But it will take time. Dr. Pearl hits upon a point that I had not thought of, which... Continue Reading
Should free-falling UnitedHealth Group be broken up? Or break itself up to survive, before it becomes another GE? (updated)
Breaking up is hard to do. But should be done if UHG wants to survive and thrive. Our proposition: UnitedHealth Group has become a victim of its own giantism, conflicts, and focus on financials–and its failure will drag down healthcare. How big? By far, it is the largest US health insurance company based on 2023 enrollments with a 15% market share, 29 million members, and $371.6 billion in revenue. It leads by far Elevance Health (formerly Anthem, 12%), CVS Health/Aetna (12%), Cigna (11%) and Health Care Service Corporation (7%). A more realistic picture of its size is that it is... Continue Reading
News roundup 22 May: an inflight ‘save’ and AliveCor’s KardiaMobile, rolling out the VA/Oracle EHR in ‘waves’, Fuze Health formed from LetsGetChecked/Truepill, hacking and ransomware 92% of PHI data breaches
...fixes and patches, in a process that seems like it started in 1900 (actually 2018), one can understand the consternation of Veterans Affairs committee member Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC): “I’m still dumbfounded at the billions and billions and billions of dollars that have been poured into an EHR that should have never been done in the first place. It’s not a system that should be used for the largest healthcare system in the country.” Healthcare Dive Fuze Health launches–phase 2 of a merged LetsGetChecked and Truepill ‘arranged marriage’. The merger of the two last October with digital/mail order pharmacy Truepill... Continue Reading
News roundup: Hinge Health public @$32/share, lower valuation. Is WeightWatchers game over? Calibrate replaces CEO, new prez for Oak Street, NMC gets ‘Smarter’ rolling up 3 portfolio companies, another splash of investor ‘cold water’
...(CT), retaining eight randomized controlled trials comprised of 2372 participants, all with a BMI ≥ 27 kg/m2, indicates that after discontinuing GLP-1 therapy, weight regain was proportional to the original weight loss. The regain varied by type of GLP-1 drug, but the study labels it ‘significant’. Obesity Reviews (Wiley) 4 April 2025 GLP-1 weight loss is not one course and done–actually good news for the teleprescribers and pharmas as in ‘they’ll be back’. Oak Street Health replaces its president. The CVS practice unit named Creagh Milford, DO, MPH as Oak Street’s new president. He comes from CVS’ Minute Clinic as... Continue Reading
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