Centene Corporation (NYSE:CNC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Sarah London: Yes. Thanks, A.J., for the question. So if we think about the members who are redetermining off, we do think that those numbers are probably carrying a slightly higher acuity, but then you have to balance that with a view that with the growth that we’ve seen in the Marketplace product. And if you look back to historic periods of growth of this magnitude, it tends to bring many more healthy members into the pool. So the net effect of those 2 dynamics, it’s hard to say exactly where that equals out, but our Marketplace team is watching both of those cohorts pretty carefully and I think has obviously had visibility into the fact that redeterminations were going to factor into 2023 and took that into account in pricing.

A.J. Rice: Okay. if I could slip in another one on your Medicare comments for next year. I know on the RADV, you said, “This is what we like. This is what we don’t like.” When you think about the rate notice, it sounds like there’s places where you think the industry can comment to CMS and potentially ask, maybe look at it in a different way or something. Could — are you willing to talk about where some of those points of discussion, at least between the industry at large and CMS might be? And in terms of your strategy, it sounds like you’re talking about a potential negative margin. So that must mean you’re going to try to stabilize benefits year-to-year in a growing market. I’m wondering, is it conservative to say we’re going to have stable benefits, but not have growth on the enrollment side?

Sarah London: Yes. On the Medicare side, we’ve said this coming into even this year is we try to design benefits in order to maximize stability as we move through ’23 and ’24. And I think we will continue to do our best to keep benefits as stable as possible, taking that long-term view that, that stable operations, optimizing for member experience, improving quality is the right thing to do, and weathering the ’24 headwind may have an impact on margin as a result. But the goal would be to keep benefits as stable as possible. So we’re not members, and we are focused on building those longer-term relationships, as Jim talked about. Relative to your first question, the RADV rule is sort of in the final state. And so there, it’s really about talking to our industry partners about how we feel about the impact of the as yet undefined methodology and what impact we think that may have and how comfortable we are with that.

And then the 2024 rate notice is a regular cycle of conversations that we have with the agency in order to communicate what we believe the impact of the somewhat lackluster rates might be on the overall industry and the benefits to seniors.

Operator: And our next question today comes from Gary Taylor at Cowen.

Gary Taylor:

Operator: Pardon for the interruption, everybody. This is the operator. Mr. Taylor, your line is breaking up very badly. It looks like we have a bad connection. I would ask that you please disconnect and dial back in or pick up your speaker phone, if that’s the case.

Gary Taylor: Is that better or not?

Operator: That’s much better. Thank you, sir.

Gary Taylor: Okay. I apologize. I just wanted to ask about expectations for ACA risk adjustment given the enrollment growth for ’23, when we’ve seen companies with really large enrollment growth in the ACA. Sometimes, they’ve been surprised to end up being increasing payable on the ACA front. So it looks sort of like in this case, you guys have generally been a receiver and now you’re going to have a much larger population. Is your expectation that’s fairly even? Or is there any material additional payable you’re contemplating for ’23?