Insurers warn about rising medical costs, disappointing investors as a lucrative market starts to shift

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Some of the largest health in­sur­ers have been hit hard by ris­ing med­ical costs in the first few weeks of this year.

Stocks of gi­ant US in­sur­ers plum­met­ed af­ter a CVS ex­ec­u­tive on Jan­u­ary 8 sig­naled that fourth-quar­ter med­ical costs will be high­er than ex­pect­ed. Both Unit­ed­Health Group and Hu­mana, which al­so have big busi­ness­es sell­ing in­sur­ance to se­niors through Medicare Ad­van­tage plans, echoed the theme dur­ing their quar­ter­ly earn­ings in Jan­u­ary.

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