STAT+: Cigna's lower earnings reveal how sick American workers are

The American workforce is getting crushed by serious medical conditions, like cancer and heart problems. Workers and their employers should expect to pay a lot for this surge of illness in the coming years, too.

That’s a key takeaway from the health insurance giant Cigna’s report on Thursday, disclosing that its fourth-quarter profits were well below what Wall Street expected. Executives attributed all of the higher health care expenses to its business that insures employers from catastrophically high medical claims — and Cigna is aggressively raising prices of those plans to make back lost profits. The company’s stock fell more than 8% Thursday.

Cigna’s stumble reflects an industry-wide trend, where insurance companies increasingly are paying for a lot more unexpected, big-ticket health care procedures. During the Covid-19 pandemic, workers deferred a lot of this type of care, but industry data suggest it is now back to pre-Covid norms, or above.

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