UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

John Rex: Lisa, good morning, it’s John. So in terms of your question, the majority of the guide to the upper end of the full-year is driven by what we’ve described in terms of the activity, the care activity we’re seeing amongst the seniors in outpatient, so that’s the core there. In terms of behavioral, what we’ve noticed in behavioral is an increase in the number of people accessing care. Andrew have this in his comments, but a very, very significant increase even just since a year ago in terms of the number of people that are looking to access care, it’s a great thing, we are planning on that continuing. We don’t see why that trend slows down, so we’re designing our benefits for that to continue. As you recall, I know Lisa, behavioral resides within OptumHealth, and so that’s a kind of an impact that we’d see in that component. And Wyatt, maybe some other commentary?

Wyatt Decker: Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Lisa. So you asked about the types of consultations and care being provided within behavioral. And we’re seeing across the board increasing utilization, but what’s encouraging from a public health perspective is it isn’t strictly young people. It’s across the board. We’re seeing 30, 40, 50-year old accessing behavioral healthcare for needed care for conditions like anxiety, depression, substance use disorder. And our commitment is to make sure that they have access to that care. So as you heard from Andrew earlier, we’ve expanded our behavioral healthcare network and we also a couple of years ago very thoughtfully launched a behavioral care provider services and we now have ambulatory services available in 37 states, and we have self-paced modules for things like anxiety and depression and we add a therapist as appropriate.

So you’ll see us continuing to make sure our members have access, as well as providing innovative scalable solutions for behavioral healthcare needs across the age spectrum. Thank you.

Andrew Witty: Yes, Wyatt, thank you so much. So, Lisa, I think you got it there. Overall, it’s very much around the senior trend phenomena. Within OptumHealth, that the behavioral piece plays its part we see that very much as an area where we will continue to step up and make sure that we’re delivering the care in the way that Wyatt just described to you. Next question please.

Operator: We’ll go next to Nathan Rich with Goldman Sachs.

Nathan Rich: Hi, good morning. Thanks for the question. John, you mentioned the balance pacing of EPS in the back half of the year between 3Q and 4Q. Could you talk about your expectations for MCR, specifically between the two quarters? And how are you thinking about the trend of care activity as we head into the back half of the year given what you’re seeing with respect to demand, as well as some of the supply bottlenecks that took care being delivered maybe being removed? And do those factors differ significantly between Medicare and the commercial or Medicaid lines of business? Thank you.

John Rex: Nate, good morning. Thanks for the question. Yes, in terms of the balance pacing, the way I describe that is — and MCR and how that feeds in, we’d expect the MCR to be a little bit lower in the 3Q than we saw in the 2Q, some of that seasonality, as you would fully expect. So within the contexting of balance, expect earnings to be a little bit higher marginally in 3Q than 4Q, because of that typical factor in there, and thinking of an MCR somewhere in the zone of between, kind of, what we saw in the 1Q and 2Q just by seasonality factor. Important in that is we expect the, kind of, general pacing of care activity to remain consistent. That’s what we’ve actually been seeing here. So since we’ve talked about this and as we’ve looked at the level of care activity across the company, these elements we talked about in terms of senior outpatient care are really remaining stable at the levels we talk to.