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July 17, 2015 at 02:45 AM
UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE:UNH) and its executives talked mainly about the company’s medical and pharmacy benefits management operations Thursday, when they went over second-quarter earnings.
The company gave little specific information about the effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) on its operations in its earnings releases, and the executives gave few details about the company’s new PPACA public exchange operations during a conference call with securities analysts.
See also: UnitedHealth execs skimp on PPACA details and UnitedHealth’s earnings: 3 lessons
Stephen Hemsley, the chief executive officer, declared that the company would not “comment on market-specific activities or hypothetical implications that we are not involved in.”
See also: Aetna’s Humana deal pressures Cigna to agree on Anthem offer
“Our focus remains squarely on expanding the capabilities of our enterprise to serve our customers more effectively,” Hemsley said.
The company is reporting $1.6 billion in net income for the quarter on $36 billion in revenue, compared with $1.4 billion in net income on $33 billion for the second quarter of 2014.
The company ended the quarter providing or administering medical coverage for 46 million people, up from 45 million people a year earlier.
Enrollment in commercial risk-based programs increased to 8.1 million, from 7.6 million, the company said.
For some things the company did not say anything much about, read on.
1. Public exchange plan results and adventures
The company acknowledged in a statutory financial report for first-quarter results that it is selling coverage through 23 individual PPACA exchange programs this year and 12 Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) exchanges, and that’s about the only exchange numbers it’s giving.
Dan Schumacher, the chief financial officer for the UnitedHealthcare unit, said the ratio of claims to exchange plan revenue is “in keeping with expectations, but obviously higher than what our traditional commercial book would be.”
