Saturday, March 31, 2012

US Big Health Insurance Corps Annual 2011 Earnings Growth Decelerate Under Affordable HealthCare Act

During the entire Bush/Cheney Presidency, the earnings of US Big Health Insurance Corps increased dramatically, contributing to the substantial upturn in the country's health care cost curve.

So, what happened during the Obama/Biden Presidency?

Well, before the new Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed, this robust earnings growth continued.

But since the provisions of ACA have started to begin to kick in, there has been a dramatic drop in this robust earnings growth.  Let me explain in more detail.

There are 5 Health Insurance Corps which dominate in the US:

UnitedHealth Group...UNH
WellPoint..................WLP
Aetna........................AET
Humana....................HUM
Cigna........................CI

And then there are 6 other ones which had Pretax Income of more than $100 mil in any of the most recent three years:

Coventry Health Care...COV
WellCare Health..........WCH
Amerigroup..................AG
Centene.......................CNT
Health Net...................HN
Molina Healthcare.......MH


The Big 5 Health Insurance Corps comprised a massive 91% of the total 2011 Pretax Income of all 11 of these insurance companies.

These Big 5 Health Insurance Corps had their Total Pretax Income increase from $12.0 bil in 2008 to $19.4 bil in 2011, an increase of a very robust 62%.

But to get to the real story here, you need to break down this earnings increase by year.

Before the new ACA began to start kicking in, these Big 5 Health Insurance Corps had their total Pretax Income increase by 23% in 2009 and by another 22% in 2010.

Then in 2011, the new ACA started to kick in and what happened?

The total Pretax Income growth in 2011 for these Big 5 increased by a much lower 8%.

And there was a similar result for the 6 other insurance corps.  Thus, the total Pretax Income growth for all 11 of these Big Health Insurance Corps declined from 25% in 2010 to only 6% in 2011.


In deriving Pretax Income, I start with Pretax Income under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), and then exclude several clearly unusual very large items relative to Pretax Income, such as Special Legal Charges and Credits, Asset Impairments, Gains/Losses on Asset Sales, and Cigna's GMIB Fair Value Gains and Losses.

Clearly, with the ACA, the Obama Administration has started to make a major impact in reducing the country's health care costs.


Below here is the Pretax Income or Loss (PTI) of these 11 US Big Health Insurance Corps for each of the most recent three or four years. 







1 Year 3 Year





% %





Change Increase

PTI PTI PTI PTI 2010 to 2008 to

2011 2010 2009 2008 2011 2011

mil $s mil $s mil $s mil $s

Big 5





UNH 7,959 7,383 5,808 4,624 8% 72%
WLP 3,958 4,354 3,874 3,122 -9% 27%
AET 3,078 2,644 1,901 2,174 16% 42%
HUM 2,235 1,749 1,602 993 28% 125%
CI 2,204 1,925 1,594 1,072 14% 106%







Total Big 5 19,434 18,055 14,779 11,985 8% 62%
% Annual





..Change 8% 22% 23%









COV 699 965 505
-28%
WCH 418 193 198
117%
AG 310 437 201
-29%
CNT 175 154 138
14%
HN 138 289 256
-52%
MH 130 89 38
46%







Total 6 Rest 1,870 2,127 1,336
-12%







Total all 11 21,304 20,182 16,115
6%
% Annual





..Change 6% 25%