re: Sell UNH?

This is why i laugh these days when people say never sell. So if you bought at 400 or 500 you have to be rethinking this strategy.

LFG!

Trying to decide if I should sell today or not. About back to my original investment and maybe I should put that $ elsewhere

Do you think providers are finally going to get a boost after 20 years? Noticed and small up tick in E&M codes, but way behind inflation over the last two decades and ancillaries were slashed. Trying to decide if I just want to go all in on industrial medicine and switch to urgent care/direct primary care or try to keep traditional system in place to be able and keep more of my long term patients.

Finally got out of this thing and now I just need Trump to do something stupid so I can buy something on a dip.

Currently:

$350.56 / 8.37% / +$27.07 Today


UnitedHealth Group UNH 8.61%increase; green up pointing triangle reported first-quarter results that substantially overshot Wall Street expectations and raised its annual guidance, signaling progress in its financial turnaround.

The announcement is likely to build investor confidence in the healthcare company’s current direction, a year after UnitedHealth announced an earnings shortfall that touched off an unprecedented share meltdown for the company.

Wall Street Darling Returns!

got back in at 265. Hopefully a nice ride back up to the 400's while collecting that div.

So globally I am intrigued by the move here today. The number one thing I was surprised by that moved the stock was the medical loss ratio. If you look at it that will tell you a ton about the stock, lower is better. What is hard to tell here is why. UHC has started rotating back to fee for service in commercial and decreased their MA lives. That is fascinating to me and contrary to their Optum Health portfolio.

Speaking of Optum, all of their business segments are down in margin and flat in growth. Optum has made up a tremendous portion of growth the last few years. That seems to be over and in fact a sale of an unknown asset in the Uk created favorable margins in Optum or the picture would be worse.

To your questions
1) MA margins will remain compressed because hospital billing is getting stronger with new technology. It will create denials by UHC. Health systems will then fight this by leaving networks- see California. I do think UHC and MA stabilize but it isn’t a growth engine anymore.

2) What is interesting is UHC forecasts erosion in their customers served. This quarter their lives were higher than expected. Overall lives dropped by 1M yet premiums were higher. A lot of losses in lives in MA where premiums per patient are the higher. I am honestly amazed at the pricing power for the commercial side. To me that area has outperformed.

3) Interestingly enough I rarely see much of Oscar at my health system clients. I really don’t have a ton of opinions on them right this second.

Oh it is absolutely a level of gamesmanship on the MLR. Look at every other facet of their earnings. Revenue overall barely ticked up, intentionally in all likelihood given some of the MA population losses, margins ticked down, and Optum is struggling.

The MLR was the first positive blip in quarters I believe. I am still interested in understanding more of how that occurred and if it is population mix or something more material.