Executives at WellPoint Inc. (NYSE:WLP) expect to have about 600,000 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) exchange plan enrollees once all of the consumers now in the application pipeline flow in.
The company also has increased Medicaid enrollment by 121,000 and is serving 100,000 private exchange plan enrollees.
WellPoint ended the quarter providing or administering medical coverage for 37 million people, up from 36 million a year earlier.
The company will have only about 2 percent of its 2014 enrollees in PPACA exchange plans, expanded Medicaid programs and private exchange plans.
But executives said the very first utilization indicators for the “qualified health plans” (QHPs) sold through the public exchanges look good.
The first PPACA individual QHP open enrollment period started Oct. 1 and was supposed to end March 31. Most states’ enrollment periods and broad enrollment period extensions have now ended.
WellPoint executives talked about early PPACA exchange experience today during a conference call with securities analysts.
The company held the call to go over first-quarter earnings. The company is reporting $701 million in net income for the quarter on $18 billion in revenue, compared with $885 million in net income on $18 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2013.
WellPoint Chief Executive Officer Joseph Swedish said the company assumed when it priced the QHP coverage that the exchange users would be older than typical commercial plan customers.