Here are four takeaways from the insurer’s results for the three months ended March 31.
1. UnitedHealth’s insurance arm, UnitedHealthcare, grew to cover 2.2 million more consumers in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period last year. This helped grow overall revenues for the segment by 13.3 percent year over year to $45.5 billion.
2. UnitedHealthcare saw large gains in its Medicare and retirement business. Revenues attributable to those segments climbed 14.3 percent year over year to $18.9 billion during the first quarter of 2018. The number of Medicare Advantage plan users increased 10.6 percent in the first quarter of this year, compared to the same period in 2017.
3. Optum, UnitedHealth’s health services arm, continued to be a significant source of revenue growth for the company. Optum increased its revenues by 11.1 percent in the first quarter of 2018 to $23.6 billion. OptumHealth, the firm’s provider arm, saw first quarter revenues climb 21.7 percent to $5.8 billion year over year. Optum has been steadily expanding its physician workforce, which currently outpaces Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente’s roughly 22,000 physicians by 8,000.
4. Altogether, UnitedHealth saw profits jump 30.6 percent in the first quarter of 2018 to $2.8 billion. That’s compared to $2.2 billion posted in the same period a year prior.
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