Gail Boudreaux

Gail Boudreaux became President and CEO of Anthem (now Elevance Health) in 2017, bringing experience from UnitedHealth Group and Health Care Service Corporation. A former All-American basketball player at Dartmouth, Boudreaux brought a competitive drive to one of America's most complex healthcare companies — a Blue Cross Blue Shield licensee operating across 14 states with approximately 47 million medical members. Boudreaux's most visible strategic move was rebranding Anthem to Elevance Health in 2022, signaling a shift from a pure health insurer to a diversified health company. She built out the Carelon segment (encompassing behavioral health, pharmacy services, and care delivery) as a vertical integration strategy similar to UnitedHealth's Optum. The goal is to control more of the healthcare value chain, improving outcomes while capturing services revenue beyond premiums. Her key challenges include managing the Medicaid redetermination cycle (which removed millions of members from government-funded plans after the pandemic emergency ended), defending the pharmacy benefit management business against Congressional scrutiny and potential regulation, navigating rising medical cost trends, and competing with UnitedHealth for managed care contracts. Boudreaux's decisions on Medicaid membership stabilization, Carelon growth investments, medical cost ratio management, and capital deployment (M&A vs. buybacks) are the primary drivers of Elevance's stock performance.