Humana CEO: We’ll Slow New Sales If Needed to Protect Quality
There won’t be too much of a good thing at Humana Inc. in 2026.
Speaking to analysts and investors on Nov. 5 after the Louisville-based insurer and healthcare services provider reported its third-quarter results, President and CEO Jim Rechtin said his team is prepared to tap the brakes on Medicare sales during the current annual enrollment period. Outlining Humana’s focus on customers’ lifetime value over simply pumping enrollment numbers, Rechtin said he’s also adamant that Humana’s operations not be stretched by the addition of new plan members.
“We will take as much growth as possible from improved retention. This is unquestionably desirable growth and we welcome new sales,” Rechtin said. “However, we are prepared to take targeted actions to slow new sales if we reach the point where the volume risk is negatively impacting member experience.”
Rechtin said new sales have been at the high end of his team’s forecast during the early weeks of AEP and that the company is both bringing in more mix it expects to have higher value and signing up more people than expected to higher-rated plans. But there’s a long way to go until open enrollment for 2026 ends.
“We will continue to monitor new sales volume and manage it dynamically,” Rechtin told analysts on the conference call. “We are prepared to take further mitigating actions as we did heading into AEP if it appears that new sales will put member experience at risk.”
On Humana’s conference call, CFO Celeste Mellet said her team doesn’t expect that insurers will get a break in 2026 when it comes to medical and pharmacy cost trends. Percentage increases, she said, are likely to again be in the high-single-digits for medical costs and between 10 percent and 15 percent for pharmaceuticals.
“We’re not seeing anything that would suggest it should be different than that at the moment,” Mellet said.
To help Humana absorb the impact of those cost hikes, Rechtin is leading an efficiency initiative that seeks to save the company $100 million over the next few years. Included in that, he told analysts, is a recent deal to outsource parts of its finance work to Genpact as well as the rollout of an agentic artificial intelligence platform for call center staff.
“These changes are a small sample of our multiyear transformation, which will include near-term tactical cost programs, but also longer-term efforts that change how we operate,” Rechtin said.
The comments from Rechtin and Mellet came after they reported a third-quarter profit of $194 million on total revenues of $32.6 billion. A year ago, those numbers were $480 million and $29.4 billion, respectively. The company’s benefit ratio for the quarter was 91.1 percent, up 1.2 points from the same period of last year.
Shares of Humana (Ticker: HUM) fell 6 percent after executives’ earnings report and gave up another 5 percent on Nov. 6. They are now essentially flat from six months ago, leaving the company’s market capitalization at a little more than $30 billion.
About the Author
Geert De Lombaerde
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of business journalism experience and writes about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, FleetOwner, Oil & Gas Journal and T&D World. With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati and later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post for more than a decade and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector as well as many of its publicly traded companies.