Health insurer stocks slide amid Medicaid remarks by UnitedHealth CEO

Shares of health insurers slid Wednesday amid reported remarks made at an investor conference by UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH) CEO Andrew Witty about Medicaid state reimbursements.

UnitedHealth and Centene (CNC) shares were down 4% in late morning trading while shares of Humana (HUM) and Elevance (ELV) retreated 3%. Molina (MOH) shares fell 6%.

Earlier Wednesday, Witty told listeners at the Bernstein 40^th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference that it could be a “multi-quarter cycle” before states begin paying premium rates that adequately cover Medicaid patient costs, Bloomberg reported.

“We've come through this very sort of prolonged redetermination cycle in Medicaid, making sure that all of those, the utilization and the rates and everything else stay in perfect synchrony through a multi-quarter cycle. There's probably going to be some disturbance around that,” Witty told listeners, according to Bloomberg.