Bright Health Group is laying off another 68 employees at its Bloomington headquarters as a part of its broader retrenchment.
Bright Health lays off another 68 employees at headquarters, the latest in a series of job cuts
The Bloomington-based company is enacting a series of layoffs, reflecting its severe retreat from its core mission of selling individual and family health insurance.
February 1, 2023 at 8:45PM
The move follows 99 layoffs announced in November and a dramatic pullback in the overall scope of its business.
In its letter to Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development about the cuts, Bright characterizes the latest move as one in a series of layoff rounds.
"Bright Health will be conducting additional layoffs in connection with a reduction in force initiative," the letter states.
This latest round of employees will be affected beginning April 1.
In October, Bright announced it would stop selling individual and family health insurance coverage — which had been the company's original mission — at the start of 2023. The company is now focused on a network of primary care clinics and selling Medicare Advantage health plans in a couple of states.
A January filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission indicated that on Nov. 4 the company's board "approved a plan to restructure its workforce and reduce expenses based on the company's updated business model."
The company expected to incur an estimated $65 million to $90 million in pretax restructuring costs. These layoffs and "restructuring activities" are expected "to be substantially completed by the fourth quarter of 2023," according the filing.
At the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference last month, the company forecast revenue for 2023 would be in the range of $3.4 billion to $3.6 billion — essentially cutting its revenue in half.
Bright Health has faced a series of challenges over the past two years, including a delisting warning from the New York Stock Exchange in December.
For the first nine months of 2022, the company reported revenue of $5 billion. The company, which has never turned a profit, posted $804 million in net losses for the first three quarters of last year.
As of Dec. 31, 2021, Bright Health employed more than 3,200 people. It has reduced its headcount since then through several rounds of layoffs.
Health officials say the recent outbreak of the highly contagious virus looked bad this summer, but optimism is growing they may have contained it.
