David Cordani: A.J., good morning. It’s David. Let me describe a little bit of the — we’ll say the buying characteristics and areas of focus in the market more broadly, and then I’ll ask Eric to give you a little bit more color in terms of the pharmacy specific space and using your GLP-1 as an example. So, stepping back, and it’s for the latter part of your comment to reinforce it, the buying behaviors continue to have an intense focus on, what I will call, base buying needs focused on affordability, coupled with consistent high-quality service levels. There’s two additional dimensions, I would say, that have intensified recently relative to need state. One, as employers, because you’re coming at through the employee lens, continue to intensify their focus on having healthy, engaged, highly-productive workforce.
They’re intensifying their focus and need and awareness of the complex behavioral health needs from their population, inclusive of, but also beyond the more intense behavioral health dimensions. This includes anxiety, stress, depression and complexity to come along with that. Here, I would note that within our Cigna Group portfolio of solutions, we’re well positioned to meet the needs, because there’s a lot of coordination that’s necessary to advance there. The second trend I’d highlight is what the marketplace is sometimes calling point solution fatigue, where over time, employers have aggregated many individual point solutions that made sense at a given moment in time, but they find themselves stepping back and looking at that inventory, questioning whether or not either, a, they’re getting all the value out of each individual solution, or b, the friction and/or abrasion for their coworkers or medical professionals is worth the value of the fractured point solutions, and therefore, are challenging more opportunities to coordinate or integrate solutions to get more value, leverage and better service from that standpoint.
And again, our portfolio is really well positioned there and continues to resonate in the market as evidenced by our growth. I’ll ask Eric to provide a little bit of color of areas of focus for buyers more broadly in pharmacy, including the GLP-1.
Eric Palmer: Great. Thanks, David. Good morning, A.J. I’ll start with the GLP-1. GLP-1s are definitely top of mind for many of our clients. There’s been a meaningful uptick in utilization here. And as I think you know, we have coverage for these medications on our formularies from early on for value-based arrangements with pharma manufacturers. We’ve seen contributions for the benefit of patients and our clients by result of those — the structures. We have recently launched a program called ENCIRCLERX, which brings together management of the GLP-1, cardiac, diabetic conditions, obesity. So these conditions often tend to be interrelated, to bring together a benefit plan design, the clinical support as necessary and the overall resources we can bring to help these patients, better manage their health and ultimately get to a better plan costs.
So, at GLP-1 and the broader cardiac, obesity, diabetes space is a real area of focus. I would also note, as David touched on in his comments, continued interest in behavioral solutions. That’s an area that we’ve got strong expertise within Evernorth, and we’re excited about the opportunities in that market and the need to help manage behavioral care more effectively. Those will probably be the top couple of specific themes I would call out at this point, A.J.
A.J. Rice: All right. Thanks a lot.
Operator: Thank you Mr. Rice. Our next question comes from Mr. Justin Lake with Wolfe Research. You may ask your question.
Justin Lake: Thanks. A couple of quick questions. One, just so I appreciate your comments on cost trend, but did see a pretty big pickup in medical costs payable in the quarter relative to reserve growth. Just curious what drove that. And then, just stepping back, the stop loss business has seen a nice acceleration this year, up in the teens. Just curious what you’re seeing there. And do you expect that to be the kind of the trajectory after we’ve seen a bit of a slowdown over the last few years? Thanks.
Brian Evanko: Good morning, Justin. It’s Brian. I’ll start, and I think David will pile on in terms of the stop loss component. So, as it relates to our medical cost payables or reserves, nothing particular I’d flag here. We continue to employ a consistent methodology as it relates to how we set our reserves. There’ll be some natural variability in this metric as product mix shift tends to occur from quarter-to-quarter. And I know the days claims payable metric is one that’s commonly looked at. We don’t target or forecast any specific level of DCP rather this is more the output of our detailed assumption setting that’s — then aggregated up to the enterprise level. So, we remain comfortable with our reserving methodology and confidence in the adequacy of the balance sheet.
