Walgreens, UnitedHealthcare Team Up To Boost Medicare Services

Walgreens Boots Alliance (NASDAQ:WBA) , in collaboration with UnitedHealthcare, recently announced plans to open Medicare services centers at Walgreensstore locations. Per Walgreens, this latest move is part of a multi-year partnership with UnitedHealthcare. Financial terms of the deal have been kept under wraps.

The plan is expected to be executed starting from January 2020, with 14 centers at Walgreens stores across five metropolitan areas namely, Cleveland, Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Memphis.

UnitedHealthcare, a unit of UnitedHealth Group Inc., (NYSE:UNH) ) is known for offering Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D plans.

This partnership should further strengthen Walgreens’ Medicare coverage for its customers.

More About the Partnership

Following the deal, UnitedHealthcare will be expanding the access of its Medicare resources to a larger number of Walgreens customers, offering key facilities they expect from their UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage plans. Walgreens customers will also be provided better customer service and information that they want locally within Walgreens.

Furthermore, Walgreens announced its partnership deal with UnitedHealthcare on Medicare plans — AARP Medicare Advantage Walgreens Plans. Those plans will offer easy access to medications through Walgreens, cheaper drugs as well as features like $0 premiums and $0 copays on benefits like primary care visits and generic drugs.

Recent Collaborations With UnitedHealthcare

In the past few years, Walgreens has been investing in a few crucial partnerships with UnitedHealthcare.

In February 2018, Walgreens had signed an agreement with UnitedHealth Group’s MedExpress urgent care centers to offer primary healthcare across 15 locations of the drugstore chain in the United States.

In 2017, Deerfield, an Ill.-based chain, had collaborated with Optum (another UnitedHealth Group subisidiary) to initiate urgent care centers at some of Walgreens' 9,000-plus drugstores across all 50 states and territories in the United States.

Price Performance

In the past six months, Walgreens has rallied 17.2% compared with the industry’s 30.1% growth.

Zacks Rank & Stocks Worth a Look

Walgreens currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

A few better-ranked stocks from the broader medical space are Haemonetics Corporation (NYSE:HAE) and NuVasive, Inc (NASDAQ:NUVA) . While Haemonetics sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), NuVasive carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Haemonetics has a projected long-term earnings growth rate of 13.5%.

NuVasive has an expected long-term earnings growth rate of 10.9%.

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