About Elephruit
Resident Nerd
I've spent my career walking into ACA and Medicare Advantage businesses that were bleeding tens, and sometimes hundreds, of millions of dollars and helping turn them around. The trick isn't magic. It's letting the data decide what matters instead of doing things because "that's how we've always done it."
Before health insurance, I was a paramedic and nurse, where you learn quickly that bad assumptions have consequences. That mindset never left.
I use AI every day, but not to generate corporate word salad. I use it to tear through massive datasets, spot patterns humans miss, challenge my own assumptions, and find the stories hiding in the data.
I have opinions. I'll back them up. If I'm wrong, I'll say so. If the industry is being ridiculous, I'll probably say that too.
UnitedHealth beat consensus by 31% and raised guidance for the second time this year. Adjusted EPS also rose 56% off the worst quarter in company history, the margin came from shedding 1.6 million members, and the raised guide still implies a much weaker second half.
Elevance beat consensus by 20% and the stock fell 10.6% the same morning. Adjusted EPS also fell 16% year over year, segment operating gain fell 27%, and the most revealing thing on the call is a word nobody said once.
Washington kept all twelve of its individual-market carriers for 2027, and King County alone has eight competing insurers. Premiums still rose a median 22 percent, the steepest of any state I have tracked. The most competitive market is not the cheapest.
Oregon loses two individual-market carriers for 2027, Providence and PacificSource, covering more than a third of enrollees between them. Here is every surviving on-exchange plan, priced 2026 to 2027 from the rate filings.
Every on-exchange Indiana plan, 2026 to 2027, pulled straight from the SERFF rate filings. The median surviving plan is up 20 percent at age 21, CareSource and Cigna are leaving, and the one new carrier shows up in just two rating areas.
Every health insurer files a detailed financial statement four times a year. I scanned all 50 states plus DC to find where you can read them for free. Eight states pass. Here is the map, the limits, and an ask.
Plan-by-plan 2027 premium changes pulled straight from insurer rate filings. Starting with Minnesota, where all six carriers have filed: what every plan costs, which plan IDs are new, and why the headline rate increase is not the increase anyone actually pays.
HCA previewed Q2 and quietly doubled its 2026 exchange-loss guidance to $1.0–1.2 billion. I mapped all 185 of its hospitals, and the leverage everyone assumes it has is not where you'd think.
Insurers are pulling back from individual ACA marketplaces, citing rising medical costs and financial pressures. We mapped the exits across 836 counties and 19 states.
A fully validated, county-level analysis of the 2026 individual health insurance marketplace, mapping the competing carrier options across all 3,143 counties in the United States.
A county-level baseline of Medicare Advantage carrier participation across all 3,081 counties, built from the CMS 2026 Landscape and filterable by SNP plan type.
