UnitedHealth Group Incorporated

After saving with customized car insurance from Liberty Mutual, I customize everything like Marco's backpack. Good morning and welcome to the United Health Group fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings conference call.

A question and answer session will follow United Health Group's prepared remarks. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. Here are some important introductory information. This call contains forward-looking statements under U.S. federal securities laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical experience or present expectations. A description of some of the risks and uncertainties can be found in the reports that we file. with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the cautionary statements included in our current and periodic filing. This call will also reference non-GAAP amounts. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP to GAAP amounts is available on the Financial and Earnings Report section of the Company's Investor Relations page at www.unitedhealthgroup.com. Information presented on this call is contained in the earnings release we issued this morning and in our Form 8K, dated January 20, 2021, which may be accessed from the investor relations page of the company's website. I will now turn the conference over to the Chief Executive Officer of UnitedHealth Group, David Wickman.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. We remain in a time of unprecedented challenges for individuals, employers, and the health system broadly, particularly frontline clinicians, including our own. Health systems across the world have been and continue to be stressed. Amidst these challenges, we are grateful for the daily displays of human spirit to serve others and the resolve to make things better. We remain optimistic because we are also living in a time of unprecedented collaboration, knowledge sharing, and innovation. The health system has come together in ways previously not seen, a powerful, multidimensional response to support patients physicians, and communities. I couldn't be prouder of or more grateful to the more than 325,000 women and men of this enterprise. They work each day under difficult conditions, with clinicians comprising well more than a third of the total. To advance a high-performing healthcare system, one built on personal human connections, enabled through information and technology, and supported by strong alignment of physician-led, value-based delivery of care. They are another profound reason for our optimism. With all that's transpired in 2020, we finished the year responsibly and strongly. We delivered meaningful advances in NPS and employee engagement, and financial results well above the upper end of our expectations, all while navigating the uncertain environment and achieving our commitment to address financial imbalances resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. As we move into 2021, we believe we are well positioned to continue to serve more people even more deeply and more effectively while continuing to build this enterprise and grow strongly in the decades to come. Just seven weeks ago, we were privileged to spend a full day with you at our investor conference. Over the course of that day, we tried to convey how we seek to lead in the development of the next generation healthcare system. We shared the distinctive capabilities we apply to make healthcare more connected, more informed, more human, and more deeply personal. We finished 2020 encouraged by the performance across the businesses of Optum and UnitedHealthcare. Let me provide just a few broad highlights. The UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage offerings are off to an excellent start. 2021 will be one of our strongest years of growth, now expected to approach 900,000 more people served across individual and group Medicare Advantage and dual special needs plans. UnitedHealthcare will have grown to serve 3.5 million more seniors over five years. Seniors choose our offerings because of the value they receive, better health outcomes and experiences at lower costs. We've also been enhancing our offerings to better meet expectations about how people want to live their lives, focusing on more digital and physical care resources in the home, expanding our one-on-one concierge navigation services, and enabling the home as the safest and more effective setting of care. UnitedHealthcare's Medicaid offerings continue to grow strongly as well, including entry into three new states in 2021. New business opportunities are substantial, with momentum towards managed care adoption by states and RFP activity accelerating this year and next. And while the economic effects of COVID-19 impacted UnitedHealthcare's employer-sponsored growth in 2020, we're encouraged by the positive market response to the new, highly consumer-centric offerings we've been discussing with you in recent months. Among these are Digital First, on-demand and physician-led products each provide deeply aligned modern personal and coordinated care experiences and save people up to 20 compared to traditional offerings these innovative products are generating significant responses because they are designed to better meet the unique needs and financial means of more people all in we expect united healthcare will grow in 2021 to serve upwards of 1.5 million more people across its senior, community, employer-sponsored, and individual offerings. We continue to make important advancements and strategic investments to lay the foundation for the next generation health system. Over the last many years, you've heard us discuss our ambition to build high-performing systems of care, including an aim to reinvent healthcare delivery. which is the first of our five strategic growth platforms. The foundations for those efforts are in our primary and multi-specialty care practices. OptumCare entered 2021 with over 50,000 physicians and 1,400 clinics. Over the course of this year, we expect to grow our employed and affiliated physicians by at least 10,000. This work of building local physician-led systems of care continues to be central to our mission and is accelerating with notable progress in the Northeast, Pacific Northwest, and Southern California in 2020.