Health Insurance Companies Rank 88 by Industry Profit Margin

Posted by admin on February 18th, 2010

I’ve posted several times before about the profitability of the "Health Care Plans" industry, see posts here and here, and reported previously that the health insurance industry ranked #86 by profit margin out of 215 industries, at 3.3%.

Update data are now available for Q4 of 2009, and the Health Care Plan industry (includes Humana (HUM), Aetna (AET), WellPoint (WLP), Magellan (MGLN), Unitedhealth Group (UNH), etc.), and the health insurance industry slipped to #88 with a profit margin of 3.4%. Actually, that industry profit margin was boosted by WellPoint’s 18% profit margin for Q4 2009, which was due largely to a one-time sale of its Pharmacy Benefit Management division. Without that sale, WellPoint’s profit margin would have been only 3.9%, the industry average profit margin would have been closer to 3%, and the ranking for the industry would have fallen a few places down to #92.