Fierce Healthcare February 7, 2024
A spike in care utilization among seniors and proposed Medicare Advantage (MA) rates that payers find less than satisfactory have dominated the conversation during the current run of industry earnings calls, but analysts at Fitch said Wednesday they expect the impacts to generally be credit-neutral.
The three largest players in MA—UnitedHealthcare, Humana and Aetna—all saw a significant spike in utilization during the fourth quarter. That care use was trending up was flagged earlier in the year, but that came to a head in the fourth quarter as MA plans saw a rise in both seniors seeking elective procedures, like orthopedic surgeries, that were deferred during COVID-19 and in MA enrollees getting the respiratory syncytial virus vaccine.
In addition, there was...
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