Amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare industry made a big splash. Eight health insurers made it to Fortune’s 2021 list of the Top 500 highest-earning US companies. Here’s how they ranked based on the total revenue for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2020.
- Top Four: CVS Health, now completely consolidated with insurer Aetna, took the number one spot of having a revenue of$268.7 billion. It’s followed immediately by UnitedHealth Group, the country’s largest private insurer with a revenue of $257.1 billion. Cigna with $160.4 billion and Anthem with $121.9 billion receives the third and fourth spot.
- Last Four: Centene with $111.1 billion has made the fifth mark in terms of revenue while Humana with $77.2 billion, Molina Healthcare($19.4 billion), and Magellan Health( $7.5 billion) have acquired the sixth, seventh and eighth spot respectively.
- Enhanced growth: Insurers, in particular, had a year of windfall growth as the COVID pandemic shut down many elective medical procedures at hospitals, curbing massive payouts. For instance, UnitedHealthcare’s profits jumped 11.3% the past year even though the insurer had to cover health care services for coronavirus patients due to a drop-off in other payouts.
- CVS’ success: CVS embedded itself on the front lines of the COVID pandemic as one of the central hubs for distributing vaccines to local communities. In the first quarter of 2021 alone, the company, now fully integrated with health insurer Aetna following a mammoth $69 billion acquisition, produced more than $69 billion in revenues.
- Ranking of others: Other firms such as Apple, Alphabet, and Amazon in that top tier are at least attempting to become more medicine-focused themselves with varying degrees of success. And then drug distributors McKesson and AmerisourceBergen makes up the next spots in the rankings.