Cigna Earnings Call Nuggets: Budget Sequestration and Medicare Advantage

Cigna Corp (NYSE:CI) recently reported its fourth quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call.

Budget Sequestration

Matthew Borsch – Goldman Sachs: My first question and I realize this is not the biggest item for you, but as we are moving towards the deadline for budget sequestration, have you referred to that in your guidance and let me just ask I’m sort of calculating that on your Medicare Advantage revenue, which is a little over $5 billion annualized, the sequester would be I guess about $100 million on that, and if you pass through 75% of that, it would be about $50 million after-tax or about $0.05 EPS. Is that all correct and do you have that in your guidance?

David Cordani – President and CEO: First, as you frame the Medicare book of business where you started, when you think about our seniors portfolio, let me go back to the HealthSpring model is based on a model that the reimbursement structure with a vast majority of the physicians are actually tightly correlated to Medicare reimbursement. So the alignment there is very tight. That enables us to be able to flex the model as we go forward and any movement in Medicare reimbursement, point one. Point two, as you know, we have a range with any of our outlook and guidance. And point three is you should look that the range of our outlook and guidance contemplates any reasonable movement from a sequestration standpoint in 2013.

Matthew Borsch – Goldman Sachs: Just on a different topic here. Can you comment on what you’re seeing in the ASO and risk side of the pricing environment and to the extent you see any behavioral change in the industry worth noting as compared to 12 or 18 months ago?