UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

But we feel very confident in our ability to provide stability to the benefits that seniors value most, things like zero co-pays for primary care visits, zero co-pays for Tier 1 drugs. Keeping zero monthly planned premiums where we had them in the past and keeping level out of pocket maximums are very important things for benefits for stability. And we are able to preserve those, so we’re really happy about that. So on balance, combined with the great momentum we see in our value proposition, the great partnerships we have and confidence from the broker community, we feel really good about the benefits we filed. And also, as we talked about in our opening remarks, really confident in seeing that momentum pull through into some great growth results next year.

Andrew Witty: Tim, thanks so much. And Josh, thanks very much for the question. Next questions?

Operator: We’ll go next to Lance Wilkes with Bernstein.

Lance Wilkes: Yes, a question on the commercial side of the business. Can you talk a little bit about membership and in the fee-based business being down? And also may be related to that and your outlook going forward, in Medicaid redetermination, are you seeing any trends with respect to recapture of those sorts of members? Or anything that’s driving the opportunity for either growth in membership or maybe you’re seeing in-account attrition due to weakness in the economy? Thanks.

Andrew Witty: Lance, thanks so much for the question. Before I hand it to [Dan Keto] (ph), who looks after our E&I business, I just want to make a couple of kind of high-level comments. We’re seeing overall a very strong performance from our commercial business this year and also setting up, it feels like very well for the ‘24 season. We’ve seen fantastic overall growth, as I mentioned, in terms of membership. And that’s been led very much by a lot of the product innovation that the team have been putting together and into the marketplace. And we see that continuing pretty assertively as we roll into ‘24. Just with that kind of backdrop, maybe, Dan, if you could respond to Lance’s specific questions, that would be great.

Unidentified Company Representative: Yes, Lance, thanks for the question. Growth is on track for the full-year. And what you see in Q2 really is represented by the contraction of one large customer in our fee-based business. Your question about attrition and redeterminations, the outcome of those, which will be some puts and takes, will probably determine where within our range we will fall. But the punch line is, we’re on track to hit our range for this year. Thanks for the question, Lance.

Andrew Witty: Great. Thanks, Dan. Thanks so much, Lance, for the questions. And just to be super clear as well that client loss that Dan just referred to, we knew about that about a year ago very much within our expectations and forecast plan. It was something we were anticipating and makes no impact at all to our full-year expectation. But thanks so much for the question. And next questions, please?

Operator: We’ll go next to Kevin Fischbeck with Bank of America.

Kevin Fischbeck: Great, thanks. I just want to follow-up on the OptumHealth, because the margin there was obviously pressured in the quarter. And I just want to understand how the margin normalization should we think about that over the next couple of years. I mean, you can — on the MA side, you can reprice for things. It sounds like you saw it in time for your bids and costs have come in line with the way that you price. Maybe just confirm that piece first. But then since within OptumHealth, you’re also relying on other providers and how they price for 2024, how are you thinking about the market? If you’re below target this year? Is this something you can get back to next year or just a multi-year thing depending on how others price? Or the leverage within your control? Or is this kind of a longer-term normalization? Thanks.