Gary Cox, MS, MBA

Gary Cox is a seasoned healthcare strategist with a proven track record of sustainable growth in health plan business lines. An experienced and effective leader, he successfully manages cross-functional teams to achieve dominant positions in the rapidly evolving healthcare marketplace. With expertise in research and analytics, Gary formulates big-picture strategy and applies it to tactical, on-the-ground execution, leveraging insights gleaned from quantitative and qualitative consumer feedback. Known for his mentoring skills, Gary nurtures talent into high-performing teams through empathy and authenticity, with a commitment to workforce productivity improvement.

Over a 22-year career at Kaiser Permanente ($100.8B revenue/300,000+ employees), Gary wore many hats. Serving most recently as Vice President, National Medicare Business Strategy and Performance Analytics, he spearheaded the planning and implementation of the firm’s Medicare business strategy and product and benefit capabilities. In this role, he optimized membership, financial performance, and revenue generation by managing a close collaboration between regional Medicare business line leaders, Actuarial Services, National Medicare Finance, and Strategic Market Planning.

From 2014 to 2019, as Executive Director, National Medicare Strategy, Products & Analytics, Gary led the development of a Medicare market growth strategy and its execution across eight regions, covering more than 1.6M members and $20B in revenue. In the process, he aligned Kaiser’s national Medicare growth strategy, directed a national annual rate setting and bidding process, and developed an analytic agenda to inform strategic market positioning, improve financial performance, and increase sales.

Named Director, California Medicare & National Analytics in 2008, Gary ran a Medicare line of business in California with more than a million members and $13B in revenue. He monitored performance and analytics across all regions, driving continuous improvement of growth-related activities. In his first year in this position, he grew membership by more than 6% annually, from 680,000 to over one million, while at the same time reducing member acquisition costs by 45%.

From 2003 to 2008, Gary served as Manager, then Senior Manager, at Kaiser’s Strategic Market Planning division, where he devised strategy and ongoing assessment for all commercial lines of business (Large Group, Labor, Strategic Accounts, Small Business, and Individual), covering more than 4.8M members and $12B in annual revenue.

Gary received an MBA from the University of California–Berkeley, a Master of Science in Economics at the London School of Economics, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.