Co-Founder & Managing Attorney
Practice Focus
Built and ran health insurer legal departments and led a multi-billion dollar health plan. That's the foundation this firm is built on.
John J. Matthews is the co-founder and managing attorney of Atlas Legal and Regulatory Solutions PLLC, a law firm built specifically to serve innovative and scaling healthcare and health insurance companies. With more than 25 years at the intersection of healthcare law, insurance regulation, and government affairs, Matthews brings a depth and range of perspective that is genuinely rare in the industry — earned by sitting on nearly every side of the regulatory table.
Matthews served as Executive Director of the State of Florida's health and benefits program — a $2.5 billion operation covering state employees and retirees and one of the largest public health plans in the Southeast. He led all aspects of plan administration, benefit design, financial oversight, procurement, and legislative affairs, competitively procuring all third-party administrator, HMO, and health insurance contracts and generating $100 million in savings against forecast projections. He is one of a very small number of healthcare regulatory attorneys who has also run a public health plan at that scale.
Matthews spent 15 years at UnitedHealth Group in progressively senior legal, regulatory, and government affairs roles, ultimately serving as General Counsel and VP of Regulatory Affairs for the Northeast and Southeast Regions. In that capacity, he oversaw legal strategy, multi-state regulatory compliance, and government affairs across commercial, Medicare, Medicaid, and specialty lines of business across 23 states, and served as Corporate Secretary and/or Director for more than two dozen UnitedHealth insurance company and HMO subsidiaries.
At Oscar Health, Matthews built the company's legal, regulatory, and government affairs function from the ground up, recruiting and leading a team of 50+ professionals. Under his leadership, Oscar achieved a 100% increase in membership, premium, and revenue, and reached its first year of insurance company profitability. He also led the company's strategic exit from its Medicare Advantage and self-funded stop-loss lines of business, navigating CMS regulatory approval, state DOI coordination, member transition, and contract wind-down with the company's regulatory relationships and reputational standing fully intact.
Since departing Oscar, Matthews has served as receivership counsel in the rehabilitation and liquidation of a multi-billion dollar HMO — one of the most complex and consequential assignments in healthcare insurance law. That work is informed directly by his own service as Chair of Florida's HMO guaranty association, as well as his service on the Alabama Life & Disability Insurance Guaranty Association and the Arkansas Life & Health Insurance Guaranty Association — the institutions that stand behind policyholders when an insurer fails.
Throughout his career, Matthews has been an active participant in the development of healthcare and insurance policy at both the state and federal levels — contributing to the shaping of laws and regulations that continue to govern the industry. He also serves on the advisory boards of several early-stage healthcare companies and as founding legal counsel for a stealth-stage health infrastructure startup, and has served as an Adjunct Professor and Guest Lecturer in Health Law and Policy at Florida State University College of Law.
Earlier in his career, Matthews served as Chief Attorney and Hearing Officer for the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation and practiced insurance litigation and health law as a partner at Pennington P.A., following a judicial clerkship in the federal courts.
At Atlas, Matthews advises health plans, insurance companies, providers, insurance receivers, and health technology and telehealth companies on regulatory strategy, market entry, compliance, and government affairs. The firm's founding premise is simple: the most valuable legal counsel in healthcare comes from having sat on every side of the table — regulator, policymaker, executive, and counsel — not just advised from one seat.
