Cigna, Humana See COVID Costs Creep Up in Fourth Quarter

February 5

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has had a largely positive impact on health insurers’ bottom lines — given the sheer magnitude of deferred routine and elective care — two publicly traded payers’ recent fourth-quarter earnings results show that they are not immune from the myriad costs associated with the case surge that occurred in the fall and winter of 2020.

Cigna Corp., which reported its fourth-quarter and full-year 2020 financial results on Feb. 4, posted an adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $3.51, missing the consensus Wall Street estimate of $3.68 because of “higher COVID cost in the quarter,” as Citi analyst Ralph Giacobbe put it. Most of that pressure was felt in the company’s U.S. Medical segment — which houses its commercial and government-sponsored insurance businesses — as fourth-quarter adjusted income from operations and adjusted margins both declined year over year due to COVID-19 and the one year-return of the health insurance fee.

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Health Plan Weekly

Leslie Small

Leslie has been working in journalism since 2009 and reporting on the health care industry since 2014. She has covered the many ups and downs of the Affordable Care Act exchanges, the failed health insurer mega-mergers, and hundreds of other storylines spanning subjects such as Medicaid managed care, Medicare Advantage, employer-sponsored insurance, and prescription drug coverage. As the managing editor of Health Plan Weekly and Radar on Drug Benefits, she writes and edits for both publications while overseeing a small team of reporters who also focus on the managed care sector. Before joining AIS Health, she was a senior editor for the e-newsletter Fierce Health Payer, and she started her career as a copy editor at multiple local newspapers. She graduated with a dual degree in journalism and political science from Penn State University.

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