States jacked up their Medicaid rates in July, a positive development for the insurer. Elevance now thinks its Medicaid margin will be better than its prior expectation of -1.75% this year.

The major insurers are entering new Affordable Care Act markets as others are leaving the exchanges en masse, though in the cases of Centene and UnitedHealthcare, they paper over larger state exits.

A secret shopper study found less than a quarter of calls to mental health clinicians resulted in appointments, with directory errors and unreachable providers driving so-called "ghost" networks.