“We could experience mid-single digit percentage losses in our Medicare business. Our foray into the individual exchange business could result in negative margins that approach double digits.”

In context

“ock of business in 2025. We will continue to refine our product offerings for long term sustainability. We also expect underlying growth in our health services business, including growth in pharmacy services as we continue to drive value for our clients and incremental improvement in our healthcare delivery businesses. We expect our initial outlook for this segment will be below our long term growth framework but will prudently provide opportunities for upside over the course of the year. Finally, we have executed the first step of our multi-year cost savings initiative that we expect will generate over $500 million next year, helping to offset the return of variable expense in 2025. Taking a step back, 2024 has been a disappointing year for performance in our healthcare benefits segment. We could experience mid-single digit percentage losses in our Medicare business. Our foray into the individual exchange business could result in negative margins that approach double digits. We are also projecting modest negative margins in our Medicaid business. It is possible that our healthcare benefits business could show operating losses in 2024 after generating over $5.5 billion of adjusted operating income in 2023. Conversely, this means that there are well over $3 of embedded adjusted EPS if we could return Aetna profitability to 2023 levels. Open enrollment for both Medicare Advantage and individual exchange has demonstrated that we took meaningful action in curtailing benefits, adjusting products, and where appropriate raising prices. While we are confident we have taken the right initial actions, the road to recovery will take time. We look forward to providing more details on our 2025 outlook and those first steps on our journey when we have more clarity on the mo”