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April 23, 2014 at 10:51 AM
Centene Corp. says it ended the first quarter with 139,400 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) plan enrollees.
About 99,700 enrolled in Medicaid through PPACA Medicaid access expansion programs in California, Ohio and Washington state.
Another 39,700 enrolled in individual “qualified health plan” (QHP) coverage through the new PPACA public health insurance exchange system.
Centene (NYSE:CNC) — a company that has focused on running Medicaid plans, Children’s Health Insurance Program plans, and other government plans — is selling QHPs through the state-based exchanges in Massachusetts and Washington state.
The company is selling QHPs through exchanges run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas.
Centene executives talked about its early PPACA program experience Tuesday during a conference call with analysts.
Centene held the call to talk about its first-quarter earnings. The company is reporting $33 million in net income for the quarter on $3.5 billion in revenue, up from $23 million in net income on $2.5 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2013.
The company ended the quarter providing or administering health coverage for about 2.9 million U.S. residents, or about 0.9 percent of all U.S. residents, up from 2.6 million people a year earlier.
About 4.6 percent of its Medicaid enrollees were consumers who came in through PPACA Medicaid expansion programs.
The 39,700 exchange QHP enrollees were Centene’s only commercial health insurance plan enrollees. All of those enrollees have paid their premiums, and the company says it expects to have about 70,000 paid QHP enrollees by June 30.
During the conference call, analysts asked executives about reports that the QHP enrollees might be sicker and taking more prescription drugs than comparable enrollees in traditional commercial health insurance plans.
“The demographics of our enrollees are generally in line with our pricing expectations,” Centene Chairman Michael Neidorff said during the call.
