Aetna Plans to be Part of Nearly 15 Healthcare Exchanges (AET)
Aiming to benefit from changing regulatory landscape, United States’ third largest health insurer, Aetna Inc (NYSE: AET) announced on Wednesday that by 2014 it intends to be part of nearly 15 healthcare exchanges.
Addressing to analysts and investors, Aetna’s executives said increase in the numbers of customers from new market places will contribute towards its growth.
With the introduction of U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, about 30 million more people are expected to join the insured; and it is believed that millions of those will be seeking health insurances through these exchanges.
All states are expected to decide until December 14 whether they will be part of state-based, federal or partnership based exchanges.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit health policy group, so far, around 18 states have decided to create their own state-based exchanges and other 18 states are expected to join federal based exchanges.
According to Aetna, the shift towards exchanges is essentially changing the way of carrying business in managed healthcare sector.
Speaking to analysts, Aetna’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Bertolini said, “More and more consumers are going to be buying their healthcare, even if the employer-sponsored system survives,”. “A lot of things that we do today are no longer necessary to the end buyer.”
Looking at the future, Aetna believes that its profits will be boosted due to costs controls, and expansion in Federal government programs, such as Medicare meant for the elderly people and Medicaid intended for low income earners. Besides Aetna’s planned purchase of Coventry Health Care Inc. by middle of 2013 is expected to create synergies.
For fiscal 2013, the company expects earnings of $5.40 a share while analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect $ 5.52 a share.
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Post Written By: Ed Liston
Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.
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