May 5 2014
The insurer also said "effective medical management" in its employer plans and Medicare Advantage business was helping rein in expenses, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The Wall Street Journal: Cigna Profit Surges On Improved Group Disability, Life Operations
Cigna Corp. said its first-quarter profit rose due to higher revenue and better management of costs in the company's Medicare and commercial businesses. ... Cigna also pointed to "effective medical management" in its employer and Medicare Advantage businesses. The company said it was continuing to expand its efforts to work closely with medical providers in financial arrangements that aim to rein in expenses and improve care. The insurer also said it expected to have around 290,000 enrollees in individual insurance at the end of 2014, with approximately 69,600 of those coming through government marketplaces. Cigna said it was seeing signs of higher-than-expected medical costs in its individual business, including health law-compliant plans sold through government marketplaces and outside (Mathews and Calia, 5/1).
Reuters: Cigna Says Early Obamacare Enrollee Costs Are High
U.S. health insurer Cigna Corp (CI.N) on Thursday said that early enrollees in new plans created under President Barack Obama's healthcare law used medical services more than it expected, confirming early forecasts it would lose money on the business in 2014. The loss tied to Obamacare, which accounts for 3 percent of Cigna's revenue, did not prevent Cigna's first-quarter earnings from beating Wall Street expectations (Humer, 5/1).
And in news on another major health industry -
The Wall Street Journal: AstraZeneca Rejects Pfizer Bid
AstraZeneca on Friday rejected an improved takeover offer from Pfizer Inc. worth more than $106 billion, saying the proposal substantially undervalued the company. The British company said the financial and other terms described in the U.S. group's latest proposal were inadequate and not a basis on which to engage in talks (Plumridge, Rockoff and Cimilluca, 5/2).
USA Today: Astra Zeneca Rejects Pfizer's Sweetened $106B Bid
British drug maker AstraZeneca rejected a sweetened offer from New York-based rival Pfizer, the firm said Friday. The new offer, which came in the wake of an earlier bid rejection by Britain's second-largest pharmaceutical firm, valued AstraZeneca at 50 pounds a share ($84.47) or $106 billion (Hjelmgaard, 5/2).
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 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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Kaiser Permanente to pay $556 million in record Medicare Advantage fraud settlement