6 connected strategy in the health insurance industry As part of its core Individual Plan, Oscar enabled members to connect 24/7 to virtual care services and assigned them a dedicated care team. Oscar focused on cost trans- parency, personalized recommendations of healthcare providers based on members’ individual health profile, providing no-cost prescriptions and no-referral doctor visits, and encouraging healthy behaviors such as walking.4 Connected Customer Relationships Oscar Health’s offerings span three types of connected experiences. First, Oscar allows customers to choose what health provider they want to be connected with online or go offline if they have a specific choice in mind, fulfilling a respond-to-desire experience for customers with specific preferences about their condition. Second, it employs a curated offering of healthcare providers based on each member’s purpose for seeking care. It pro- vides personalized recommendations that meet the dual purpose of convenient access (in terms of distance, for example) while minimizing the costs it needs to cover. Third, it offers its members the opportunity to earn a dollar a day by meeting a steps goal (i.e. the members need to use a tracking device such as a smartphone or wearable in order to meet their prescribed number of daily steps through walking or running.) Through that initiative, Oscar aims to coach behavior and increase the health of its members, while also reducing costs associated with poor member health. Connection Architecture Oscar’s connection architecture includes both a connected producer (via a personalized concierge team) and a connected retailer (via referring patients to specific healthcare providers, but also by intermediating that service much more than other insurance com- panies that remove themselves from service delivery). Performance In terms of growth, Oscar has performed well in its main Individual niche market, but has struggled to expand beyond that. As of 2021, Oscar Health reached 529,000 members in 291 counties across 18 states, growing its membership figure at 59% CAGR between 2017 and 2020.5 In terms of the competitive environment, Oscar is the third largest national insurer in the Individual market.6 This figure represents both significant growth for a young company and a tiny fraction of the larger, B2B health insurers. Oscar Health launched late and has struggled to gain significant market share in the larger Medicare 4 https://www.hioscar.com/about 5 https://www.hioscar.com/about 6 https://www.hioscar.com/about