Dive Brief:
- Health plan giant WellPoint, the second largest insurer in the U.S. with 14 Blue Cross Blue Shield licenses, reported $2.3 billion in net income, up from $2.2 billion in 2012. It had $53 billion in revenue, up from $46 billion the previous year.
- WellPoint expects to generate new business from the exchanges, but hasn't released a specific prediction as to how many new enrollees it expects.The company declined to provide 2014 profit forecasts,citing uncertainty around the health reform process. "Given that we are just three weeks into the open enrollment period, it is really too early to draw any definitive conclusions, said CEO Joseph Swedish in its third-quarter earnings call with investors.
- According to Swedish, the volume at WellPoint's call center doubled during the first week after the launch of Healthcare.gov, to 35,000 calls, and climbed to 45,000 the second week.
Dive Insight:
Though it'd be great for investors to know what impact the rollout of ACA enrollment had on WellPoint's bottom line, it's probably not worth worrying about just yet. (Of course, the Street still dinged WellPoint for failing to produce a nice rosy number for health exchange enrollment, with shares dropping 3% the day of the call.) But the truth is that WellPoint's reticence makes sense. Realistically, given the collosal failure of Healthcare.gov, it's likely it will be six months or more before enough new enrollees show up to give health plans a fair idea of what gains they can expect.