Oscar regards technology anddata as the keys to transform the health insurance industry, andAlphabet's buy-in is a vote of confidence.

Google parent company Alphabet has invested $375 million inOscar Health's planned 2020 launch of Medicare Advantage plans.

Modern Healthcare reports that New York-based Oscar intends toenter the Medicare Advantage space in 2020, as well as to expand its presence in the individual and smallbusiness markets. In addition, Oscar's board is getting SalarKamangar, a Google executive and the former CEO of YouTube, as anew member.

Oscar regards technology and data as the keys to transformthe health insurance industry, and Alphabet's buy-in is a vote ofconfidence, according to The Hill. Currently Oscar offers healthcoverage in six states through the Affordable Care Act, “and seeksto make the system smarter through innovations like having a'concierge' team, including a nurse, that helps enrollees withtasks like finding the right doctor.”

According to The Hill, the role of Josh Kushner, Trumpson-in-law Jared Kushner's brother, as cofounder has raised someeyebrows because of Oscar Health's participation in the ACA.

In a Wired interview, Oscar Health CEO MarioSchlosser said of the Alphabet influx of cash, “It's fantastic forus because it will really allow us to focus fully on the core modelwe've been building for the past 6 years, which is: use technology,use data, use design, use a human approach to build a verydifferent health care experience,” adding, “And that's what thisallows us to do.”

It's not the first time Alphabet has put money into Oscar,having done so through its venture capital fund Capital G and itshealth services spinoff Verily. But this move ups the ante, andalthough Wired says neither company offered specific figures, “itseems that Alphabet will now own roughly 10 percent of Oscar.”

The way Oscar is going about its business is by basicallyrebuilding its infrastructure. Schlosser told Wired, “We have ourown claims system we've been building, we have our own clinicalmanagement system, we built our networks ourselves—pretty mucheverything that we do internally to manage people's health care wasreinvented and rebuilt from a technology perspective.”

And it certainly sounds that way, with Schlosser saying aboutthe Alphabet investment, “We can hire more engineers, we can hiremore data scientists, more product designers, more smart clinicianswho can think about health care a different way.”