Health insurance · Licensed carriers
Evry Health
A Dallas startup that did not build a layer on top of health insurance. It built the insurance company, took the Texas licence, and sold the whole thing to Globe Life. Being a regulated carrier, it leaves a public record.
A letter to a committee
On September 5, 2024, the Texas House Insurance Committee took testimony on network adequacy, the rules that decide whether a health plan has enough doctors close enough to its members. Among the documents submitted for the record was a two page letter from a company most people in the room had never heard of.
“My company is a new health insurer, domiciled in Texas, founded by Texans, backed by Texas investors, and serving Texas,” it began. “We provide fully-insured commercial health plans to employers and their employees. We also built our own medical network, contracting with approximately 87,000 providers in Texas.”
Then it got specific in a way press releases never do. Decatur, the main city of Wise County, lacks inpatient and emergency capacity, so the company contracts with the nearest providers in Jacksboro, in Jack County. The state will not count them, because Jack County is not one of the company’s underwriting service areas. Fix that, the letter asked. It was signed by Christopher E. Gay, chief executive officer, with his direct phone number underneath.
Carrier, not middleman
The distinction matters more than it sounds. Many companies that say they are reinventing employer health insurance are not insurers. They are third party administrators, managing general underwriters, or brokers with software: they process claims and design benefits while somebody else carries the risk and files the statements.
Evry is not one of those. The Texas Department of Insurance lists Evry Health Insurance Company of Texas under NAIC company code 17135, and the state complaint file records it with the respondent role “Ins Co - Licensed/Active” and, on other rows, “Exclusive Provider Org.” It files network adequacy reports through SERFF like any other Texas carrier, under tracking numbers EHTX-134882220 and EHTX-134882222, for two networks called Evry Premier and Evry Premier Plus.
Those filings are the most detailed public description of the business that exists. They cover 33 counties and 49 specialties in each, for each network: 3,234 combinations. In the 2026 cycle 3,034 were reported adequate, 196 had no enrollees in the county at all, and four required a waiver: behavioural health in Dallas and Bexar counties, speech therapy and outpatient surgery in Collin. The state heard them on May 14, 2026 and approved all four on May 22. The reason given each time was that providers did not respond to outreach.
Three founders who had done it before
Chris Gay is a Dallas native with two degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from Georgetown. He started at Goldman Sachs and moved to the IT side, partly, he says, because they did not wear suits. In 2006 he founded MileMeter, the Texas auto carrier that invented pay per mile pricing. Mark Jamilkowski, the chief financial officer and chief actuary, had been a managing director at KPMG. Jay Startz, the chief operating officer, came from fintech.
All three appear in the company’s launch post from Y Combinator’s Winter 2018 batch, which holds the clearest sentence anyone there has written about the strategy: “We can do this because we are a software company that owns an insurance carrier.” The plan was an exclusive provider organisation with no deductibles and almost no copays, paying doctors on outcomes rather than volume. The company came out of stealth in November 2021, reached Austin, Houston and San Antonio in July 2022, and took accreditation from the National Committee for Quality Assurance.
The exit that reads like a beginning
On October 13, 2023, Globe Life Inc. of McKinney announced it had agreed to buy Evry Health. Neither side disclosed a price. Globe Life’s quarterly report did, in the only way that counts: a subsequent events note called it “for an immaterial amount.” D Magazine reported that Globe Life “was already an investor in the company,” which turns an outside acquisition into an insider taking control. The deal closed during 2024 and added $8.7 million of goodwill. A subsidiary schedule filed in August 2024 lists both Evry entities among Globe Life’s wholly owned companies.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | NAIC company code 17135, domiciled Texas, carried in state datasets as “Ins Co - Licensed/Active.” Weiss Ratings lists it as licensed in Texas only. | Public record |
| Network filings | Two networks across 33 counties and 49 specialties. Of 3,234 rows, 3,034 adequate, 196 with no enrollees, 4 waivers approved May 22, 2026. A separate facility based filing shows 28,100 rows, all adequate. | Public record |
| Complaint file | Five complaints, all received between June 9 and July 27, 2026, all closed within about three weeks, none recorded as confirmed. Reasons include inaccurate provider listing and denial of claim. Nothing for 2022 through 2025. | Public record |
| Ownership | Agreement October 2023 “for an immaterial amount,” closed during 2024, $8.7 million of goodwill booked. Both entities on Globe Life’s subsidiary schedule of August 15, 2024. | Public record |
| Statutory results | Weiss Ratings, reading the annual statements, cites “a significant -37% decrease in enrollment during the period” and operating losses in 2022 and 2023, against excellent capitalisation and fair liquidity. | Independent |
| Named customers | Patient Physician Network, a Fort Worth area physician organisation, publishes an Evry renewal package dated January 1, 2025. No other employer is named. | Public record |
| Prior authorisation | The company reports a 7 percent denial rate in 2024 and 4 percent by the end of 2025, all upheld on appeal. It also states “approximately 87,000 providers in Texas.” Group commercial plans fall outside the CMS-0057-F disclosure rule, so none of this appears in a filing. | Company-stated |
| The comparison used | The CEO told Becker’s that “the industry average for prior authorization denials is 25% to 35%.” The first year of federal disclosures, analysed by KFF in August 2026, put standard denial rates at 12 to 18 percent, and Texas at 11.6 percent. | Differs from the record |
| Where it sells | A January 2026 partner release says plans are “available to employers of 51+ in select states.” The company site says Texas, and every licensing record found shows Texas alone. | Differs from the record |
| Size of the book | No enrollment count, premium volume or loss ratio published by the company, by Globe Life, or in any state report found. | Not found |
Read plainly: the licence is real, the filings are thorough, the complaint record is thin and clean, and the company is now a small unit inside a $25 billion insurance group. What is missing is scale. Two years on, Globe Life still says the acquisition “supports additional incremental growth of our group health products” and warns of volatility “due to the infancy of this business.”
What to watch
- Whether Globe Life ever breaks Evry out of its United American division. Until it does, the size of the business stays hidden.
- The 2027 network adequacy filings. Four waivers out of 3,234 rows is strong; the trend is what matters.
- The complaint file. Five complaints in one summer after four quiet years is either growth or trouble.
- Any licence application outside Texas, which would give “select states” something to stand on.
In their words
“My company is a new health insurer, domiciled in Texas, founded by Texans, backed by Texas investors, and serving Texas.”
Christopher E. Gay, testimony to the Texas House Insurance Committee, 2024 · Public record
“Seeking perfection for network adequacy is exceedingly expensive.”
Christopher E. Gay, same testimony, 2024 · Public record
“We can do this because we are a software company that owns an insurance carrier.”
Chris Gay, Y Combinator Winter 2018 launch post · Founder
“At Evry Health, we want to drive prior authorization denials to zero, and we’re really close to achieving that.”
Chris Gay, Becker’s Payer Issues, 2025 · Interview
“We let the software do all the brute force stuff so that our nurses and doctors can work at the top of their licenses.”
Chris Gay, D CEO Magazine, 2026 · Interview
“Globe Life is trusted for keeping generational promises.”
Chris Gay, Globe Life acquisition announcement, 2023 · Company release
“Due to the infancy of this business, we may experience volatility related to operating results as the business scales.”
Globe Life Inc., Form 10-Q, 2026 · Public record
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordForm D, Evry Healthcare, Inc., CIK 0001870261
- Public recordCommittee testimony on network adequacy
- Public recordNetwork adequacy waiver requests, datasets yfeb-xw4b and e597-cvix
- Public recordInsurance complaints, all data, dataset ubdr-4uff
- Public recordGlobe Life Inc. Form 10-Q, subsequent events note
- Public recordGlobe Life Inc. Form 10-K for 2024, goodwill note
- Public recordGlobe Life Inc. Form 10-Q for Q2 2026
- Public recordGlobe Life Form 8-K exhibit, Schedule 5.12 Subsidiaries
- IndependentMajor rating factors, Evry Hlth Ins Co of TX
- IndependentHow a Texas payer cut prior auth denials to 7%
- IndependentPayers ranked by prior authorization denial rates
- IndependentTexas prior authorization denial rates, 2025 data
- IndependentInside Evry Health’s prior authorization push
- IndependentGlobe Life’s acquisition of Evry Health is rocket fuel
- IndependentEvry Health emerges from stealth
- FounderEvry Health Y Combinator Winter 2018 launch post
- CompanyEvry Health launch and Texas expansion releases
- CompanyGlobe Life Inc. acquires Evry Health
- PartnerColor and Evry Health partner on a virtual cancer clinic
- CustomerPatient Physician Network, Evry Health renewal package
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
