This week’s graphic takes stock of the 2024 financial performance of four leading insurers: Humana, Cigna, CVS and UHG. These healthcare giants, especially CVS and UHG, continue to show the benefits of their strategies to become full-stack healthcare platforms. All four payers reported some degree of intercompany eliminations, an accounting process to ensure revenues are not double counted, enabling them to keep a higher share of the premium dollars within the parent company. UHG reported $151 billion in intercompany eliminations, more than half of what Optum, UHG’s non-insurance arm, reported in consolidated revenues. Despite the high revenues, payers were not immune to industry headwinds. All four grew their consolidated revenue last year, but all reported higher medical cost ratios and lower operating margins in 2024 compared with 2023, an outcome largely attributed to higher utilization among MA beneficiaries. Ancillary business lines are bolstering bottom-line numbers for each of the payers, but persisting uncertainty around potential health insurance reform could hamper their growth.
