UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (UNH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. I think we're ready to get going. Julie is going to read a short statement, and then we'll get going.

Great. Thank you. I want to take a moment to remind you that today's presentation will include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results might differ materially. A description of some of these risks and uncertainties can be found in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time, including the cautionary statements included in our annual reports on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on 10-Q.

Thanks so much. And as everyone knows, we got UnitedHealth Group up in our next presentation. We're very pleased to have Wayne DeVeydt, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Wayne, thanks for doing this. And I know you've only been at the company for a couple of months. Maybe just give us a little bit of your sense of things and what you've learned and where you're focused.

Thanks, A.J. Good morning, everyone. Yes, it's been 8 weeks now. So it's been an interesting journey out of the gate. Maybe I'll start with just a couple of broad comments. And part of this is -- part of the reason I came back to the company is Steve, our CEO, said, the good news is everything can be fixed. The better news is a lot of it can be fixed as early as next year. And I think the longer term is really around '27, what we're going to do around OptumHealth and the investments to get that back to its core, and OptumInsight, some of the core investments we're doing there to actually get new products refreshed back into the market. But what I would say is having competed against this organization for years, both as the CFO of Elevance and then on the Board of Centene, the one thing that's very clear to me is the assets are as good as I thought they were. The management team actually is quite deep, albeit we've made a number of changes along the way. And I do think Steve has got this company focused on all the right areas right now. So looking forward to -- as Steve and I joked, we're 1 of 40 quarters. We've got 40 more to go where we want to show that we can get back to the swagger the company once had.

There you go. There you go. Well, we're all looking forward to that. So maybe I'll ask a few questions about Medicare Advantage to kick off here. We're sort of a few weeks into AEP. Any new developments in a few weeks further? Any new developments that -- of what you're seeing in terms of retention, your own book, enrollment?

No, I would say, as of right now, the annual enrollment period is kind of playing out as we expected. We talked about losing approximately 1 million lives. Just to give some perspective on that 1 million lives, about 200,000 would be group MA. These are lives where we've already either priced the book or chose not to participate in the repricing. And then about 600,000 were PPO lives that we exited the products completely. These were lives that we were not economically making a fair return on. And then if you look at the delta around 200,000 lives, it's split evenly between D-SNP and non-D-SNP at this stage. So I would say early indications are we're probably going to fall out in those ranges. It could be a little plus, a little minus, but it doesn't appear to be materially off at this point.

So in the third quarter, you added about 200,000 to the attrition to bring it up to 1 million from what you talked about previously intra-quarter. Is that mainly coming from less well-performing plans? Or how would you characterize where those are coming out of?

Yes. It's interesting, A.J., because on an absolute basis, we talked about 200,000 more lives. But typically, when you exit the 600,000 PPO, you'll recover some of those lives. And we've assumed we'll get no recovery of those and then 200,000 more. And so from our perspective, we -- it's a competitive process out there. We do think that the way we priced our product, as you know, we went with 10% trend over the 7.5%. That is going to put us as a bit of an outlier on pricing, but we think it's prudent, especially in this environment where there's a lot of unknowns. And then ultimately, it's around product design. And I think in the product design, we're seeing more food benefits being offered by some of our peers, and that will generally pull a large D-SNP as well as non-D-SNP population. And that's primarily where we saw the increase was these added benefits being offered at a lower price point.

Okay. Okay. You mentioned you're using a 10% medical cost trend. I know that includes some assumptions about physician fee schedule and workday intensity, also about the coding intensity that providers had. Do you want to elaborate a little bit on maybe give people because that's a step-up from 7.5% this year that you've experienced, how conservative do you think that is? Or -- and why that -- why go with that?

So when we build trend, this is really an important thing to anchor around. Each year, as you look with hindsighted trend, there are things you can point to that you know were what drove trends. So think about how many workdays are there in a particular year and how does that impact the outpatient setting. And you can flex trend up or down based on how many Monday, Tuesdays there are in a particular year for outpatient surgeries. You know what new drugs are coming to market. So you can flex trend up or down based on pipeline drugs coming to market or drugs going from branded to generic. And so as we build our trend each year, we go through a process of kind of stacking it the same way we've always stacked it. But there were some new items added in last year's trend that we are repeating for this year's trend. One is the impact of AI and how that's affecting revenue cycle on the provider side. We have assumed that, that trend does not decline at all. So we've kept it at the same level that we modeled for this year, even though we'd like to think we'll bend the curve on that a bit. We've also then gone through a process of adding in items like tariffs, the unknown for a run on the bank if we don't get certain product designs that can happen. We kind of go through this. And then each year, you're left over with something called residual. And residual trend is, I can't explain it. It's what's left over. And so we took that same residual and then added it on top of that as well. So think about everything that's occurred this year, we believe, is going to repeat, then we've added to that for items like tariffs and other items. And then on top of that, we kept the same level of residual. So will that play out to be conservative, we will see. If it's not conservative, meaning it's prudent and it's dead on, we'll be glad we priced at that level, and we think that means we'll get a lot of membership back in '27. If it proves to be conservative, it's a lot easier to adjust product design going into '27.

Okay. That makes sense. I think the company said it expects to get back to the 2% to 4% margin, maybe at the high end in '27. Can you talk again, I think you said some modest step-up in margin in '25 -- I mean, from '25 to '26 and then a further acceleration in '27. Maybe just walk us through what you're thinking about margin in Medicare Advantage?

Yes. Well, there's a lot of unknowns still. We need to get through the open enrollment. We need to see how trend plays out. Is our pricing as strong as we think it is. I think right now, factoring all these in, we have a degree of confidence of being up roughly 50 basis points in margins. Obviously, it could potentially do better than that. But I think initially, our goal is anchor on something that we feel pretty comfortable with. The question will be as you go into '27, you're going to get more pricing pushed through, you're going to better define the products. The competitor landscape always gets its pencil sharpened. And as you know, in '27, we know our star ratings already, and they're quite strong again. And so we know that as we go into '27, we can be highly competitive because we already know the rate environment. We are already making all of our investments for '28 stars, and we had a meeting on Friday going deep on what we're doing differently. I mean this is one of these things where I think the company's ability to get that extra dollar because of the star programs and how that works is really the differentiator of how you're going to expand margins into '27 and into '28.

Okay. Maybe moving over to commercial for a minute. I think margins are expected to improve in '26, although still be somewhat below your long-term target. And I think part of that is just the timing considerations on when you realized in some of the book that you needed to reprice. Maybe walk us through where you're at there. Any pushback in terms of the repricing strategy for commercial?

Yes. So think of the commercial book, the way we think about it as being both our -- kind of our fully insured non-individual family plans and then there's our HICS book as well. And so I would break them into 2 buckets. Relative to our broader commercial, excluding HICS, early renewals are encouraging. I think individuals understand the market we're operating in. We're retaining the level we thought we would have trained. The pricing is sticking, which has been good so far. The only caveat I'd throw out on that is your larger, more sophisticated clients all happened in this last quarter. So things look good. Things are progressing well. Broker relationships are strong, but this is where you really get to the heavy negotiation. So no indications that anything is different than what we said on our quarterly call, but just an awareness that you really start hitting the bigger accounts right about now.

Okay.

On the HICS front, I would simply say that we did a 25% plus rate increase across the board. We are exiting products and expect to lose about 2/3 of our membership there. We assumed in our stepping off point for guidance that the advanced premium tax credits would not be extended. That is a big reason we're assuming so much membership will decline. And at this stage, that appears to be the case.

Right. Over the weekend, I guess, we've got further clarity on that. Just on the traditional commercial book, I think we've seen a cost trend in the high single digits. A lot of that's employers choosing to cover GLP-1s for weight loss, choosing to cover specialty drugs and some other stuff. Are you seeing any dynamic change in the way employers are approaching benefits, looking to push more on consumers perhaps or anything else with benefit design that's front burner that's worth calling out?

I think the short answer, A.J., is yes, we're seeing a lot more focus on it because I think the trends are at levels that have been somewhat unprecedented for almost 2 decades. And I think employers are starting to understand some of the implications of these trends. And so you're seeing in product designs, even things as simple as going to co-insurance versus deductibles on certain items or understanding that generics have to be offered first in all scenarios. And so I would say that the openness to benefit design is probably the greatest we've seen in a long time. At the same time, I think employers are trying to find a way to offer these new drugs that are coming to market because they're fantastic in many ways like the GLPs are. And so you'll continue to see the balancing there. But I think there is more of the burden being put on the individual consumer to bear these costs.

Interesting. I think long term, the company had stated that its public exchange margin was 7% to 9% pretax. Obviously, this year, it's been a lot more challenging for you and others in this market. Given the pricing that you've done, do you think getting to something in the low single digits next year, 2% to 3%? You said you assumed the subsidies would go away. Is that in the cards potentially?

I think it is, A.J. In fact, we will be positive margins on our HICS book for 2026. I think at this point, it's probably prudent to assume low single digit. If the subsidies get extended in any capacity, that's usually a positive sign because you'll get some of the healthier lives that couldn't afford the product actually coming back in. And so it kind of improves the risk pool, and that will be kind of a catalyst for margin expansion. But again, we're not assuming that at this stage.

Right. Okay. Maybe to switch over to Optum. On OptumHealth, I think the company is exiting 200,000 lives and also expects an aggregate 10% decline in value-based lives. So that's an incremental 300,000. Is that due to the increase in UHC membership losses? Or is something else at work there? And are these part of your older value-based cohorts or the newer ones?

A lot to unpack there. So let me try to break these into buckets. So 200,000 lives are PPO lives that we are exiting. These are newer cohorts, which is super relevant to A.J.'s question because if you think about value-based care, there's an S curve. And so when you're first getting these individuals, you lose money as you get them into your referral patterns into your system and then you start to make money on the back half of the S-curve. If you go back to the true north of what VBC was for Optum, it was a tightly controlled network. Mostly, employed or contracted physicians generally focused on Medicare and duals. When the company over the last several years expanded more broadly to PPO, it went outside of that kind of core business of tightly controlled, went to more affiliated physicians and was even eventually expanding into things like HICS and CAID. And so part of this 200,000 lives is just returning back to the way value-based care works, what makes it work at its core, and it's getting back to that tighter one. And so this is -- these are lives that we did not believe economically you could price for them and do the medical management based on the disparity of not only product design, but even location across the state of where these members were. If you look at the other 300,000, it is a combination of UHC membership declination that's happening through repricing on the Medicare book. And it's a few small external payers as well. We -- with many of our external payers as well as UnitedHealthcare, one of the interesting things is where are we at on the S curve. And if we're with a more mature cohort, and you know that you're at the point now that you're starting to see the benefits of your value-based care working, we are not leaning in on rates all at once. We're going to wait into the rates, get some more of the rates in '26 and then get in '27, the remaining amount. And so for those individuals that are maybe early cohorts, we're taking a more aggressive stance in de-delegating the lives. For those that are more mature cohorts, we're working with those payer partners to wait into the rate structure.

Okay. Okay. I know you're not going to really grow the number of lives, at least that's not the intention in OptumHealth for '26. But by '27, it sounds like you will be back to a growth mode. Any way to think about the type of lives you'll add? Will they come from UHC more than they have in the past? Or it will still be a mix of UHC and third party? Any other way to think about the types of lives you want to add when you start growing again?

Yes. I think it will continue to be a mix of both UHC and other payer lives, especially where we have the model built with the concentration we talked about where it's in a closed network with the employed and contracted physicians. What was the second part of your question, A.J.?

Just any characteristics that would be different about it once you get back to growth? And what would be the trajectory? Any thoughts about the trajectory on how that might grow when you start?

Yes. This is an important question that's being asked because we've had some folks say, so this only works on MA lives. And that's not actually accurate. The focus will be on MA lives and on dual population. The model works on PPO if you are actually within the closed network employed and contracted docs, right? So it all still comes back to what is the basic premise of the model? Do you have the scale within a market where you have not just the physicians, but you have the ambulatory surgery centers, you have the infusion centers, you have the specialty drug distribution. When we have all those components, you can do PPO. It will work. But you have to have all those components before you expand to a broad state PPO contract. So I think you'll still see the bias towards those high-utilizing lives, which are generally seniors and duals.

It sounds like one of the things that's constraining operating income growth a little bit at OptumHealth is the decision to make more investments. We used to think of investments in OptumHealth as being we're adding new lives and in the first year or 2, they don't really contribute much. What are the -- you're not growing next year in OptumHealth in terms of lives. So what is the what is the incremental investment? What's that going toward?

Yes. The simplicity that A.J. put on it is the way it should work. So I just want to be clear. It is that simple, right? You should lose money in the first couple of years on the members as you get them into the model, but the core investment should not be that substantive. The majority of the investment here is the acquisitions that have been done over the last 5 years. The company went very integration light, view it as connected the electricity and the plumbing and then stopped versus the real value create is getting on to the right patient accounting platform, getting into the Epic system, working through the rev cycle the way you would any other platform. And so a lot of the investment you're going to see over the next 18 months is going beyond electricity and plumbing. And that's what should have been happening over the last 5 years, but that is not what had happened. And as a result, you lose sight of some of the membership and you lose sight of some of the care that's occurring because you're not on this single chassis single platform. So that's really what we're talking about, A.J.

Okay. And is some of that a bolus that needs to get done in '26 and then it moderates? Or is that just a higher level of spending?

It's more of a bolus and then it should be moderating. It will go through '26 and then probably first half of '27, then I think you're off to a good start then.

Okay. Maybe pivot over to OptumInsight for a second. The company has indicated that in light of the cyberattack last year, it needs to make some investments there as well. Can you comment on what you need specifically to do there, what the time line is and how you think about return on those investments?

Yes. So a couple of things. The Change Healthcare cyberattack really caused the company to lose a fairly large amount of its customer base over a short period of time. And that base is generally fairly sticky and you get a lot of cross-sells into that base over time. And so 2 things really occurred. One is a large sticky base was penetrated and a lot of competitors got a piece of that pie. And then two is the new products that you would typically bring to market, you weren't developing because you were so focused on getting stability back in the base. So fast forward to where are we at today. We have stability in the base. We are starting to see the base grow again. The product design has still been underinvested, though. So that's where you heard us say on this last call, investing in people. Part of the people investment is adding over 2,000 AI engineers, like real engineers, this is all they do. We are getting some quick sales already as we pilot programs within UHC, we then productize them and then can roll them out. So the new Real program that Sandeep talked about on our earnings call, it works. It works well. We've already sold to 6 new clients in the last 90 days. So I think this is going to get back to, A.J., we had to rebuild trust with that existing customer base. We had to get new products out to market. That's starting to happen. I think that momentum will start to continue through '26, but I think '27, again -- you'll see margin expansion in '26. You'll see us improve operating earnings in '26. But I really think '27 is when you'll really see that take off as well because we should start getting that embedded ARR growing at a regular pace.

Okay. And you talked about the loss of business in the cyberattack. I think there was a perception that a lot of that might come back. What is your updated thinking? And where are the growth opportunities in OptumInsight when you think across the different offerings they have?

Yes. So I'm a little less optimistic of how much of it comes back, but I am optimistic we will get some of it back. And what do I mean by that? I think one of the lessons the industry learned during the Change Healthcare was how reliant the health system was on a provider. And what we're finding is that while a lot of individuals in the short term switched because they needed to get immediate stability and get back to paying their claims, we also found that during that window, a lot of payers realized as well as providers that having all your eggs in one basket wasn't a good thing as well. And so we're slowly starting to get some of that back, but we're not getting back the whole client. What we're getting is kind of a dual track where we get some of the revenue back and then that dual track becomes kind of a balancing act for payers and providers where they always have a backup source that they can go to. Regarding like new products and what we're bringing to market, it is going to be extremely heavy AI at this stage. We are all in on AI. I know Steve, as our CEO, is not only all in, but he is aligning incentives around what the entire company does around AI and how quickly we can productize those and bring those to market. I love it. It's what I love about him, 73 years old, and he wants to embrace everything about AI. And so he is jumping into it. But he's really going to align incentives for the entire management team around taking cost out using AI internally and then productizing it. So I think you'll see a lot of that. I think you'll see fintech as well. That's a space we really like for OptumInsight.

Yes. You did move -- what is it, UBS? Obviously UBS, United Financial over to OptumInsight. Maybe I wasn't thinking about that before, but you mentioned it, I'll ask you, what was the rationale for that? And what's the opportunity there?

So we'll move it over with the new year. So starting in January, and we'll restate the segments. So you'll have a chance to see what that looks like. But I will tell you that the opportunity that we have to continue to expand within our financial services platform is quite substantial. And I think you'll be surprised at the quality of what's been built there over the years and the margin of that book of business. And we look at that with the same lens of how we could leverage AI within that as well to further expand and candidly, accumulate even more deposits. And it's really through the deposits that we also continue to find more cash flow to invest within the businesses. So it's a really interesting platform, A.J. I think you'll see that it's a very attractive margin business. And I think it's one that we've grown, but it's been somewhat buried.

Okay. Interesting. Well, I mean, the business OptumRx, they have been the most stable and just chugging along, I guess, in the last 2 weeks has faced a lot of news flow, not so much to you guys, but external to you and so I want to spend a few minutes just asking about the implications. One of your peers announced a week or so ago that they proactively are going to try to change their PBM model to a model that's rebate-free as they describe it. What is your view on that model, acknowledging you've had a similar but not completely comparable approach with point-of-sale rebates that you've offered for some time. Just any -- give us the reaction to that and if it requires any competitive adjustments in your view?

So first of all, we are aligned with passing on rebates to the end user, the consumer. But maybe to give some perspective on the announcements in the last couple of weeks. So the point-of-service announcement, we did that beginning in 2018. So in terms of any investments in infrastructure and doing point of service, that's about 7 years old news for us. Regarding passing on rebates, we announced last year that we would do 100% rebate pass-through starting in 2025. 85% of our clients, they had an ability to opt in for the first 2 years. And then in year 3, we will mandate the transition. 85% of our clients opted in on January 1 of this year. So for us, the vast majority of the rebates are being pushed through already. We expect that to grow to 95% next year, and that is reflected in our stepping off point that we gave when we guided towards at least an initial stepping off point for next year's growth rate. And then we expect to be at a full 100% by 2028. We don't have any structural investments. So I would expect our PBM to grow next year. I would expect you to see operating earnings -- core operating earnings growth even with the declination of membership in the UHC book. We had our best selling season on non-UHC this year. And I think, again, this is a business that's critical. The one thing -- I know it gets a lot of public rhetoric, and it's one that probably has earned a bit of its reputation the industry has over the years. But if you look at what drug trend was before PBMs existed, I don't think people understand that PBMs going away is not a solution. It would be just the opposite. But I do think the industry doing the pass-through with transparency of all the rebates will really alleviate a lot of the cloud that's existed over this industry for years. And so I applaud the move of our competitor. I think, as I said, we proactively announced that we were doing that already, and I think the industry needs to move there.

Okay. We continue to hear, though, that some employers really like the pool of rebates. They can use that money for other things, and they're not that gung ho about either having them completely done away with or pass-through. Do you think that this announcement and the way the industry is going, is that going to lead to more churn in the competitive environment? Or any thoughts on that?

Well, it's part of allowing folks to wait into it and having the optionality of deciding do they want to go in immediately. Labor is probably one of the larger parties that really likes the flexibility of rebates. And that's why we've offered to all of them a multiyear period to either wait in or decide other mechanisms that they would prefer to have beginning in 2028 that allows them to still have the same flexibility that they want. I think ultimately, we're going to be responsive to our clients' needs. So if the client wants those rebates in some other format, that's our goal. But we also want to be responsible to the regulatory environment we're in, which is full transparency for end users to the extent they want that.

Yes. Yes. There's been some discussion about if we do away with rebates, what about rebate guarantees or trend guarantees? Is this going to put pressure? One of the companies said that they were evaluating that. What do you see in your book of business? Is that an issue in any way if we move away from rebates, sort of doing it in a systematic way, so presumably not, but just to ask the question?

Yes. At this stage, when I meet with our team, I don't think they view it as an issue. I think it's just -- you'll find a way to manage to whatever the new state is. But I think part of being proactive -- and again, I applaud our peers for doing this, the more proactive you are, the more you control kind of the destiny of where this lands. And so again, it's part of the reason we started this back in '18 and continued it this year. But from our perspective, A.J., we don't see it as a headwind or a concern.

Okay. And of course, we had announcement late last week about GLP-1s. I know it's still early and there's still a lot of questions. What steps have you taken -- what's your thinking about this? And how disruptive is this potentially to bids that are already in for Medicare Advantage or other aspects of the business?

Yes. This is going to be an interesting one. I think, A.J., even you might have done a write-up on this, which I thought was quite well done, but it was really this idea of will this qualify one as a significant cost rule where potentially there's no impact, right? It's 100% pass-through, government picks it up and then you determine what the new rates need to be and then they're capitated, and that remains to be seen at this stage. Even -- when will this actually get effectuated and how will it be effectuated remains to be seen. I say all that to say this is why we feel good about our 10% trend for next year, back to this residual that we allow to stay in trend. It's exactly for items like this, kind of the unknown. And so as of right now, I'd like to say I think our pricing is still solid. And I think what appeared to be an industry high rate increase, I think, is panning out more and more by the day to be equally prudent and -- hopefully conservative, but at least prudent at this stage. So a lot of unknowns, though, based on that announcement, but one that we're going to obviously watch closely.

So a lot of what we have is just from what the different drug companies have said, some question about whether this will be a demonstration project. There's also some question, I think Lilly put in their press release that starting in April 1, there'd be a $50 per month co-pay for Medicare beneficiaries. I mean, do we have any sense of what the administration is going to do and how this would actually work out? Or it's just too early probably?

Yes, it's just too early. I think -- but what you are reading, though, A.J., is I think, again, the example of -- there's many ways to kind of cut this. And I think people are just struggling with how do you roll this out? How do you create a sense of mutual responsibility through co-pays? Will the government again come in with a significant cost rule? So I think there's just a lot of unknown, and it's probably one item to track. I think probably the most important thing is do you have any residual pricing? I think that's important. In case it doesn't swing your way, but I think this will be a good thing actually for the industry. I think this will get resolved in a positive light, but again, a lot of moving parts.

Any thoughts on how much savings you might get on -- I mean, you're already providing it for diabetics and Medicare. You've got the commercial side. Is there savings to be had on this on the existing book?

Potentially -- potentially, right? So this is where you could look at and say, well, you're getting a new wave of individuals that weren't using the drugs, but you're also getting a savings on those that were. So again, just -- there's just so many moving parts now until we get clarity from the administration of exactly how they're going to roll this out. It's just difficult other than speculating at this point.

Right. Okay. There was some discussion on the last call about portfolio rationalization and that the company was looking at its assets to evaluate whether they make sense long term. Can you just give us a little further thoughts on that, perhaps?

Yes. I think if you look at the last decade or so, the company began spending more time internationally as well in South America and Europe. And our focus is going to be on U.S. domestic operations. We'll continue to have international ops that support our U.S. domestic operations. But ultimately, we're going to try to remove those distractions and get back to the core. There's enough happening here. There's enough growth opportunity in Optum, broadly speaking, that we should focus on the core. And then there's small assets that we're looking at that are smaller in nature that we're just questioning whether or not they're just core to the portfolio. One of the things Steve and I are trying to do is make sure you know, though, that to the extent we sell these assets of any scale at all, we're going to carve it out. We want you to see the components, understand the pieces. And so -- but I would anticipate in the next 30 to 90 days, I think we're close on getting at least one of these signed and then hopefully, early first half of next year, we get remaining assets under contract. So our goal would be to eliminate those distractions by mid next year. And then as we mentioned earlier, get back to deploying capital through domestic M&A, mostly around AI and fintech and as well as returning the buyback program.

And what -- I mean, the company had said they wanted to get leverage back to sort of the 40% range. I think the feeling people had is that, that probably is sometime in the second half of next year potentially. Any updated thoughts on that and when the company might be back to a buyback? And it might as well, I'm sure there's some people in the room that would be interested in strategy around the dividend. I mean, that seems like that's solid, but let me just give you a chance to comment on that?

Yes. So let me start with saying we expect to continue to grow our dividend. No change in posture on our dividend. It will remain intact and growing. Second thing is the buyback is a massively compounding effect for our investors, and we would like to get that moving by second half of next year. Our projections would imply that we should be more than trending towards the 40% debt to cap. With the assets we're selling, we have the flexibility to pay down debt quicker. And so I would anticipate second half that we will be back to buybacks. We obviously spend time with the agencies to make sure they see our trajectory. And I think you should expect us to be fully engaged in the M&As in the back half of the year as well.

Okay. I always get to ask you about the long-term growth algorithm, latest thoughts on that. I know you've laid out, I think, or at least Steve has growth next year, then maybe low double-digit growth the following year '27 and then back in '28, something more in line with what we've historically provided. Is that still the thinking at this point? And anything you'd like to expand on that?

No, I would say it is still the thinking. And what I would expand on is simply say before I took the job with Steve, we met over breakfast, and we laid out the growth algorithm together, and we're aligned. And I think what you saw before, I mean, we get 5% just through capital deployment, right? And so you're really talking about high single digit for the delta. And when you look at the assets we have and the opportunities around Optum broadly, I think the historical algorithm is one that we still believe in.

Okay. Well, I really appreciate you guys participating, Wayne and Julie, and thanks, everyone, and we'll end it there. Take care.

Thanks, everybody.