Cigna's headquarters in Bloomfield, Connecticut. Credit: JHVEPhoto
Cigna today announced plans to "explore strategic alternatives" for its Evicore health care utilization management business.
The company also announced plans to stop selling individual health coverage through the Affordable Care Act public exchange system in 2027.
Brian Evanko, who recently took over as the president of Cigna, appeared to indicate during a conference call with securities analysts that the Evicore move might be due partly to health insurance industry interest in creating a new, standard prior authorization system, as well as a belief that the unit is not a core growth platform.
"EviCore is a part of enabling how care is evaluated and delivered across the industry, including working with numerous health plans to perform reviews and prior authorizations," Evanko said. "We will explore options to continue delivering the highest level of service for health plans and the industry at large while maximizing long-term value. We see the potential for different approaches to standardize prior authorization across the industry, improving transparency for customers and clients, reducing the administrative burden for providers and creating efficiencies for the industry."
Cigna held the call to go over results for the first quarter with securities analysts. The company streamed the call live and posted a recording online.
What it means: An EviCore deal could be part of efforts to overhaul the health care prior authorization system.
Jobs: Cigna previously said it could eliminate about 2,000, or 3%, of its current jobs.
Company executives did not say how the coming EviCore changes and the individual exchange plan market exit might affect employment.
The company said in a quarterly financial filing that spending on severance payments associated with strategic optimization efforts increased to $337 million in the latest quarter, from $171 million in the first quarter of 2025.
Stop-loss: Cigna is a major provider of stop-loss insurance for self-insured health plans.
The company reported that revenue from the product increased to $2.1 billion in the latest quarter, from $1.9 billion in the year-earlier quarter.
Cigna did not talk about how stop-loss claims compared with stop-loss premium revenue during the quarter.
Earnings: Cigna reported $2.1 billion in net income for the latest quarter on $69 billion in revenue, up from $1.8 billion in net income on $65 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2025.
The company ended the quarter providing or administering major medical coverage for 18 million people, or about as many people as it was covering a year earlier.
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