Mike Badome | 2026 MHE Emerging Leaders in Healthcare

I was born in Colombia and adopted at a young age, then raised in New York before moving to Boca Raton, Florida, at age 7, where I spent most of my upbringing. My early influences came from my parents, a hardworking blue-collar father and a dedicated stay-at-home mother, as well as a blend of Italian and Jewish cultures that shaped my values around work ethic, resilience and family.

From a young age, I’ve been analytically inclined, which led me toward actuarial science. I was also drawn to golf early on — an individual sport that demands discipline, patience and constant self-assessment — which has influenced how I approach both my career and problem-solving.

I studied actuarial science at Florida State University and business at Northeastern University, becoming a credentialed actuary in 2016. A highlight from that period was spending a summer studying abroad in Florence, Italy (right down the Arno from the Ponte Vecchio), during my junior year, an experience that broadened my perspective well beyond the classroom.

[I am] currently an accomplished healthcare executive and actuarial leader with 18 years of experience spanning high-growth start-ups and established organizations, all within the healthcare ecosystem. Currently serving as chief actuary at Arcadia, I lead enterprise actuarial strategy focused on enabling providers, ACOs [accountable care organizations] and payers to succeed in complex value-based care environments.

Throughout leadership roles at Arcadia, Evolent Care Partners and Iora Health, I have built and scaled high-performing actuarial teams while driving innovation in risk modeling, cost forecasting and value-based contract strategy. My expertise spans Medicare Advantage, MSSP [Medicare Shared Savings Plans] and commercial risk arrangements, with a consistent track record of improving financial performance, guiding growth strategy, and enhancing forecasting and revenue integrity.

Recognized as a strong actuarial executive, I bring a unique ability to bridge technical rigor with strategic leadership, translating complex analytics into actionable insights that improve care quality, lower total cost of care and accelerate sustainable healthcare transformation.

Outside of work and golfing, my proudest achievement is my family. Marrying my wife Kristen and raising our two children, Madison and Matthew, and Bauer, our 5-year-old golden retriever, remains the most meaningful and grounding part of my life. I consider myself a very lucky man.

Turning point in your career

I don’t think of my career as having a single defining moment. It’s been more like a stack of complex and ill-defined business problems that eventually compound into insight.

Early on, I made a conscious decision to say yes to almost every opportunity that came my way. Anytime someone asked, “Would you be interested in x?”, I leaned in. That mindset exposed me to a wide range of problems and responsibilities much faster than I would have otherwise experienced, and it shaped how I approach growth and risk.

If there were a true inflection point, it would be leaving a large national payer, where I was a manager, to join a cash flow-negative start-up as a VP [vice president]. That shift forced me to move from operating within a structured system to helping build one in real time. It changed how I think about ownership, ambiguity and impact — and, ultimately, set the direction for everything that followed.

Biggest day-to-day challenges

Healthcare is a constantly moving target. It demands speed but rarely gives you the space to step back and fix foundational issues. One of the biggest challenges is operating in that tension: You’re making decisions and giving guidance while the underlying landscape is still shifting.

At times, it feels like the system would benefit from a pause, an opportunity to simplify, align on the basics, and move forward with more clarity and consistency. But in reality, the work doesn’t stop. Healthcare is a 24/7 operation driven by patients in need of care at all hours of the day.

Within my role specifically, that translates into balancing three competing demands: acting quickly, maintaining actuarial rigor and standards, and continuing to scale a product. Each of those on its own is manageable. Doing all three at once in a dynamic environment is where the real challenge lies.

Use of AI

It’s an interesting question to answer as an actuary because we operate under strict standards of practice, which naturally make us more cautious in how we adopt AI [artificial intelligence].

Today at Arcadia, we’re using AI primarily as a force multiplier, not a decision-maker. That includes leveraging agents to support coding, accelerate rapid prototyping, and support clear, consistent and structured communication. The goal isn’t to replace actuarial judgment but to reduce friction. The value is less time spent on manual tasks and more time focused on interpretation, validation and decision-making.

Just as importantly, we’re deliberate about where AI does not sit in the workflow. Anything tied to final assumptions, methodologies or sign-off remains firmly human led. In that sense, AI is helping us move faster and communicate better without compromising the rigor and accountability the role requires.

Top priority

Arcadia is becoming an outcomes-as-a-service company, enabling healthcare organizations to measurably improve care quality, the patient experience and their financial sustainability so they can deliver care to Americans for decades to come with a resilient, lasting ability. The company will continue to invest in AI-native solutions that help care teams anticipate patient needs, identify rising risk earlier and prioritize interventions before outcomes worsen, thereby combating skyrocketing costs that are creating an affordability crisis. Supporting the federal government’s broader vision for a more connected, innovative health technology ecosystem, Arcadia delivers the foundation for scalable, responsible AI in healthcare. In 2026, Arcadia is also deepening its role across life sciences by responsibly connecting trusted payer and provider data with research and care delivery, returning clinical trial opportunities and precision medicine signals in the exam room.

Recommended book, article, podcast, TV show or documentary

The “Secret Experts Podcast” (full disclosure: I was recently on it). I’d recommend it regardless. It’s a candid look at how people inside industries, such as healthcare, actually think. In my episode, I talk through a personal perspective on cost and a broader thesis: As an industry, we tend to keep “swinging harder” (more complexity, more spend) instead of stepping back and sharpening the axe (fixing root incentives and design flaws). That tension shows up everywhere in healthcare. My TV show recommendation is “The Pitt.” It does two things really well for me. First, it reframes what a “fire drill” actually means in healthcare: constant urgency, real stakes. Second, it’s a reminder that across the system, there are incredibly committed people trying to do the right thing. Even when the system is broken, the instinct to “do no harm” is very real and worth grounding yourself in. “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” and “Somm” are two documentaries I recommend. Neither is about healthcare, but I think that’s why they’re useful to me. Both are studies in craftsmanship and mastery: what it means to obsess over doing something well over a long period of time. Healthcare often gets pulled toward scale, speed and financial performance. These documentaries are a good counterbalance, reminding you what excellence and discipline actually look like at the individual level.

Making U.S. healthcare less expensive

U.S. healthcare is expensive because it isn’t a single system; it’s a fragmented ecosystem of providers, payers, pharma and intermediaries, each operating with different incentives. While many entities are margin driven, the bigger issue is misaligned incentives: The system largely rewards volume over value, complexity over simplicity and fragmentation over coordination.

This leads to several structural cost drivers: high unit prices relative to other countries, administrative complexity across payers and contracts, duplication of services, and limited accountability for the total cost of care. Rather than efficiency gains flowing through the system, they are often absorbed or offset due to this fragmentation and misalignment.

What should be done is less about eliminating margins and more about realigning incentives. Expanding value-based care models, increasing price transparency, simplifying administrative processes, and holding entities accountable for outcomes and total cost of care are critical steps. The goal isn’t to remove profitability; it’s to ensure the system rewards efficiency, quality and patient outcomes rather than volume and complexity. Accountability is the answer.

Personal goal

I’m hoping to pick up a completely new skill this year, something that pushes me outside my comfort zone. I have two young kids who are learning to ice-skate, and it hasn’t come easily to them. Watching that process has been a good reminder of how hard it is to be a beginner.