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October 31, 2017 at 06:14 AM
Aetna Inc. is turning away from the upheaval in the U.S. major medical insurance market and focusing on other product lines.
Mark Bertolini, Aetna’s chairman, and other executives talked often about Medicare plans, care coordination efforts for Medicare plan members, and efforts to help small employers self-insure today during a conference call with securities analysts.
They showed little interest in trying to return to major medical under today’s tumultuous conditions.
(Related: Aetna to Stay Out of Individual Health Market in 2018)
“Our whole view is that the best thing to do when you’re going through hell is to just keep going,” Bertolini said, in response to an analyst’s question about uncertainty about federal policy. “We just keep plowing through it.”
For now, Bertolini said, Aetna is mostly out of the commercial insurance markets affected by the Affordable Care Act. “When that rights right and stable, we’ll look at considering how to get back in,” Bertolini said.
Earnings
Aetna held the conference to go over its earnings release for the third quarter.
The company is reporting $848 million in net income for the third quarter on $15 billion in revenue, compared with $597 million in net income on $16 billion in revenue for the third quarter of 2016.
The company ended the quarter providing or administering major medical coverage for 22 million people, down from 23 million people a year earlier.
Medicare Advantage plan enrollment increased to 1.5 million, from 1.4 million, and the number of Medicare supplement insureds increased to 733,000, from 667,000.
But the company’s Medicaid plan enrollment fell to 1.3 million, from 2.4 million.
The number of people the company covered through ordinary insured individual or group health plans fell to 4.6 million, from 5.6 million.
CVS
The Wall Street Journal has been reporting on rumors of CVS offering to acquire Aetna for $66 billion.
