Aetna in the headlines: 7 recent updates

Aetna is facing the latest legal setback to its Medicare Advantage contract to provide coverage to retired New York City employees, and parent company CVS Health is implementing layoffs and restructuring as revenues decline. 

Here are seven updates about Aetna and CVS Health Becker's has reported since July 25. 

1. A New York State Supreme Court judge permanently blocked the implementation of New York City's plan to switch 250,000 retired city employees from traditional Medicare to an Aetna Medicare Advantage plan.  
   
   

2. Phoenix Children's patients are out of network with Aetna after the two sides were unable to reach an agreement by their Aug. 6 deadline.
   
   
3. CVS Health said it is eliminating 5,000 "non-customer-facing positions" across the company, but did not specify where the cuts will occur, including at Aetna. "At this time, we don't have a breakout of job impacts to share, but this decision applies nationally across the company to primarily corporate positions," a CVS Health spokesperson said in a statement shared with Becker's. 
   
   

4. Higher utilization is putting pressure on Medicare Advantage medical cost ratios and will likely continue through the end of 2023, executives from CVS Health told investors. The company assumes Medicare Advantage utilization rates will stay elevated through the end of 2023, CFO Shawn Guertin said. 
   
   

5. CVS Health posted 10.3 percent higher revenues in its second-quarter earnings and beat investor expectations, but the company's net income dropped 37 percent year over year, largely because of company-wide restructuring, acquisition-related expenses, increased medical utilization among older adults and continued pressure on pharmacy reimbursements.
   
   

6. In less than two years, Aetna's Medicaid program in Florida has outpaced the national average for NICU births through a partnership with ProgenyHealth, a case management platform serving mothers and their newborn children. Jennifer Sweet, CEO of Aetna Better Health Florida, sat down with Becker's to explain how the payer reduced the rate of NICU births for its beneficiaries.
   
   
7. Aetna will expand to two new counties on Covered California, the state's ACA exchange, in 2023.