CaptainJ47

We comin!

Is this how the hantavirus spreads?

I have had no luck moving but I have swapped with people.

I am right there with you. Trying to burn one this month. Ultimately just having my wife come on a work trip. Don’t forget you can use it for Mexico, Canada, all the way down to Costa Rica.

Are you flying out of MSY?

Islay is great! If you can hit Campbeltown I enjoyed that down there as well. Amazing whisky. I LOVED Islay. The big distilleries on the south side are great. I enjoyed Bunnahabhain, Caol Ila, and Ardnahoe on the NE side.

Honestly on flights that short you often weren’t getting served anything but an express service anyway. Even then the “flight attendants will remain seated because of turbulence” announcement was frequent. What is missing here is full service for the 350-500 mile flights. This impacts BTR/MSY-ATL so this is an upgrade for us in SELA.

Go frogs

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.

Hoping someone can help explain where the money for the income comes from for this? Also if unemployment exists because of AI but there is also a decrease in the cost of goods and services does that mean we enter a deflationary timeframe? How do we protect purchasing power?

I freaking loved it. I hope it doesn’t change. Friday and Saturday were GLORIOUS. Amazing how much interaction you have with random people when not glued to a phone.