If UnitedHealth Group's first-quarter earnings report on April 16 is a harbinger, other publicly traded health insurers will soon be popping their own Champagne corks.
Aetna, Anthem, Cigna Corp. and Humana, which make up the rest of the big five commercial insurers, will release their first-quarter financials this week. Centene Corp., a Medicaid-focused insurer, also will unveil earnings.
UnitedHealth said profit in its opening three-month period jumped 29% while revenue increased 13%, handily beating Wall Street's predictions.
The managed-care sector is “well-positioned” to exceed earnings expectations in the first quarter, thanks in part to the “choppy results” from the same period in 2014, said Chris Rigg, a healthcare analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group. Rigg predicted Aetna and Cigna will have good quarters because of their routinely conservative outlooks.
The percentage of premium revenue spent on medical care will be closely watched to see how well the big insurers managed an uptick in healthcare spending. Several economic reports show hospital spending has jumped in the past few months as more people gained and used insurance. Drug spending also has risen. But UnitedHealth's medical-loss ratio dropped in the first quarter, and executives there projected “no acceleration” in utilization trends.
Insurers also are expected to report how many members they gained through the Affordable Care Act's exchanges, Medicare Advantage enrollment growth and Medicaid expansion. UnitedHealth added 570,000 exchange customers in this year's first quarter.
