Shares of several health insurers including CVS Health Corp CVS, Humana Inc HUM and Elevance Health Inc ELV are trading lower Wednesday after UnitedHealth Group Inc UNH highlighted an increase in elevated volumes of non-urgent surgeries, which has increased fears of higher costs for insurers.
What To Know: Speaking at a Goldman Sachs healthcare conference, Tim Noel, CEO of UnitedHealth's Medicare and retirement business, pointed to elevated demand for outpatient procedures from Medicare patients, per Reuters.
"We're seeing that more seniors are just more comfortable accessing services for things that they might have pushed off a bit like knees and hips," Noel reportedly said at the conference.
The elevated demand is expected to increase the company's second-quarter costs. As a result, UnitedHealth said it expects its medical loss ratio for full-year 2023 to be in the upper end of its prior outlook.
Humana and Elevance are two of the largest health insurers in the U.S. After acquiring Aetna, CVS also operates as a top-tier health insurer serving about 24 million medical members.
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CVS, HUM, ELV Price Action: At the time of publication, CVS shares were down 4.58%, Humana was down 8.53% and Elevance was down 5.04%, according to Benzinga Pro.
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