Welcome back to predictions season! We invite you to gaze into our cracked and cloudy crystal ball as we look ahead to 2024. But first, let’s look back and see how we did last year.
In 2023, we give ourselves seven out of 10, and while we aspire to achieve something better than a C, we think that’s pretty good. We also want to note that one of our evergreen predictions–namely, that “Regional Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans should, but will never, merge to better compete”–may be partially disproven if Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) VT’s proposed merger with BCBS MI is approved by regulators. BCBS LA also attempted to merge with Elevance but that deal was blocked. We continue to think that payor scale is crucial, which should drive more Blues to combine, but despite making business sense, Blues mergers are almost impossible to pull off due to regulatory issues and departing management’s understanding that they have awesome jobs.
