The Catch: MLR Rebate Accrual

Assurant Health believes it has a $42 million MLR rebate accrual, but the total is $6.8 million less the company had expected earlier in the year.

Cigna, Bloomfield, Conn., is reporting $290 million in net income on $5.5 billion in revenue, compared with $461 million in net income on $5.4 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2010.

U.S. health plan enrollment held steady at about 11 million; international enrollment increased to 1.2 million, from 1 million.

During the Cigna earnings call, company executives estimated the company has accrued about $44 million in rebate expenses on an after-tax basis.

HE’S TOLD THEM SO (AGAIN)

Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), tried to get the attention of members of Congress today by noting, in testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, that rising health care costs are a serious problem.

“Under both CBO’s baseline and its alternative fiscal scenario, the aging of the population and rising costs for health care will push spending for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs considerably higher as a percentage of [gross domestic product] (GDP),” Elmendorf said, according to a written version of his remarks.

“If that rising level of spending is coupled with revenues that are held close to the average share of GDP that they have represented for the past 40 years (rather than being allowed to increase, as under current law), the resulting deficits will increase federal debt to unsupportable levels,” Elmendorf said. “To prevent that outcome, policymakers will have to substantially restrain the growth of spending for those programs, raise revenues above their historical share of GDP, or pursue some combination of those two approaches.”