Phillip Lee, West Florida Market President, Florida Blue

August 2026 —Invest: spoke with Phillip Lee, West Florida market president for Florida Blue, about the region’s evolving healthcare landscape and the organization’s commitment to affordability, access, and community partnerships. “Our mission is unchanged and we are unwavering in it: to help people and communities achieve better health,” Lee said, reflecting on a year marked by leadership transitions, demographic growth, and shifting economic pressures.

What key changes over the past year have had the greatest impact on Florida Blue’s strategy and operations in West Florida?

This past year represented both continuity and change for Florida Blue. Most significantly, our organization experienced an unexpected and profound leadership transition with the passing of our longtime West Florida market president, David Pizzo, who was both a respected leader and a personal mentor to many of us. David served Florida Blue for 27 years and shaped the region’s identity through deep relationships and a strong community presence. Stepping into this role has been an honor, and it reaffirmed our responsibility to ensure that our partners, customers and communities understand that our commitments remain unwavering.

That transition required us to take a thoughtful look at our priorities as a regional team. We spent the past year ensuring organizational clarity around the needs of the populations we serve across our 14-county region. Today, we insure a little over a million customers, spanning individual Affordable Care Act plans, Medicare members and a substantial number of small, mid-sized and large employer groups. Our focus has been on staying connected to these customers, understanding the regional dynamics affecting their health journeys and aligning our strategies to to transform the health care system into a better system of health for everyone..

Healthcare remains an incredibly dynamic space. Even with the best efforts of payers, providers and policymakers, challenges persist: healthcare is still often unaffordable, access varies widely across communities and experiences can feel fragmented or siloed. Those realities motivate our work. Over the last year and a half, we have been very intentional about grounding our regional strategies in what truly matters to the people we serve. Our mission is unchanged and we are unwavering in it: to help people and communities achieve better health. We have made meaningful progress, but there is still significant work ahead of us, which is what energizes our team.

Which collaborations and partnerships in West Florida are most shaping Florida Blue’s impact today?

West Florida is fortunate to have one of the most collaborative healthcare ecosystems in the country. Across our 14-county region, we work closely with health systems whose leadership has been instrumental in advancing care quality and innovation. In Tampa Bay specifically, we have strong relationships with BayCare, Tampa General Hospital, AdventHealth, Orlando Health and HCA. What distinguishes this market is not just the presence of these systems, but the caliber of their leaders and their willingness to work collectively for the benefit of the community.

Our partnership with Tampa General is a strong example. Several years ago, we recognized the need for a different value proposition for small and mid-sized employers, who make up more than 70% of Florida’s workforce and who often struggle to keep pace with medical inflation. That realization led to the creation of Truli for Health, a new company built by Florida Blue and GuideWell, anchored by system partners in each region.

In West Florida, that anchor partner is Tampa General. Despite launching in the middle of the pandemic, the model has been well-received. Many employer groups have now gone through multiple renewal cycles, seeing increases of less than 5% without raising deductibles, premiums or cost sharing. That level of stability is rare in today’s healthcare environment and demonstrates what can be achieved when insurers and providers design models together from the ground up.

Our collaborative work extends well beyond product development. Florida Blue is a founding partner of Tampa Bay Thrives, a behavioral-health initiative that brings together the CEOs of BayCare, Tampa General, AdventHealth, HCA and Florida Blue. The organization focuses on strengthening behavioral-health resources, improving coordination and addressing barriers to care. This kind of multisystem, cross-sector collaboration is one of the most unique and inspiring qualities of the Tampa Bay region. It is not something we see in every market, and it has positioned the region to tackle complex challenges more effectively.

What do you see as the most significant trends and challenges facing health insurers right now?

The most significant challenge facing both insurers and consumers today is the cost of care. We are currently in the heart of the special enrollment period, a time period when people who have gone through major life events can change their health insurance plan or sign up for coverage for the first time. Across Florida we are working with individuals and businesses who are navigating rising costs and economic uncertainty.

Florida Blue is one of the largest participants in the Affordable Care Act marketplace, and Florida is the largest ACA state in the country, with roughly 4.7 million enrollees. More than 90% of those individuals are under 250% of the federal poverty level, meaning even modest price changes can have a significant impact on their ability to maintain coverage.

We are seeing growing momentum around new care models, greater use of telemedicine and home-based care, and thoughtful integration of AI to improve efficiency and responsiveness. The most successful approaches will be those that recognize the full experience of the consumer — access, cultural relevance, empathy and affordability all matter. The organizations that ground their strategies in real consumer sentiment will be best positioned to deliver value.

Success requires insurers to ground strategies in actual consumer needs and reinvest savings back into expanding access and sustainability for families and employers.

We are building a future where care is more connected and personal—where technology amplifies human touch instead of replacing it. We are adapting our enterprise strategy to industry challenges, addressing critical healthcare worker shortages in Puerto Rico, and leveraging AI to transform how we work. By partnering with providers to control costs and using AI for better outcomes, we’re tackling healthcare’s toughest challenges and making a real difference for our members, customers, and communities.

Here in West Florida, I remain optimistic. We have an exceptional public-sector leadership base, strong private-sector partners and a community that thinks proactively about its long-term health and economic vitality. Florida Blue is committed to building models that reinvest savings back into the system, expand access and create more sustainable trajectories for families and employers.