All eyes are on UnitedHealth Group for signs the company – and health insurance industry as a whole – is getting a handle on rising costs that have dogged the nation’s giant health insurers for the last two years. In this photo is a UnitedHealthcare office building in Phoenix, Arizona on July 19, 2023. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
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All eyes are on UnitedHealth Group for signs the company – and the health insurance industry as a whole – are getting a handle on rising costs that have dogged the nation’s giant health insurers for the last two years.
UnitedHealth Group, which owns UnitedHealthcare and has historically been the first of the major health insurers to report its quarterly earnings, ceded the pole position to Elevance Health for a couple of quarters last year.
But next week UnitedHealth is back, reporting on Tuesday, January 27 as the first health insurer out of the box to report fourth quarter earnings as the industry continues to reel or recover from higher-than-expected medical costs.
UnitedHealth’s report and forecast for the 2026 year ahead will be key for clues on how the sector is doing and whether the industry is turning the corner.
Some observers think 2025 was the year health insurers – particularly those with government business like Medicare Advantage – faced its worst headwinds.
Earlier this month, Wolfe Research upgraded the managed care sector to “outperform” seeing 2025 as the year the health insurance industry hit bottom. “We upgrade the MCO group to Outperform on expectation that 2025 will generally prove to be a bottom to both margin and earnings across the group,” Justin Lake and analyst colleagues at Wolfe Research wrote in a January 7 report.
Following UnitedHealth will be Elevance Health, which reports its earnings on Wednesday, January 28.
Both UnitedHealth, Elevance and Humana, another big player in Medicare Advantage that will unveil its fourth quarter earnings next month, could benefit more long term from the upcoming release of the “Medicare Advantage 2027 Advance notice,” which could reveal a positive for the industry in the form of increased rates from the federal government to administer benefits for older adults who buy such coverage.
Medicare Advantage plans contract with the federal government to provide traditional coverage available in traditional Medicare plus extra benefits and services to seniors, such as disease management and nurse help hotlines with some also offering vision, dental care and wellness programs.
Some health insurance companies that are the biggest players in privatized Medicare Advantage coverage, including CVS Health’s Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealthcare pulled back this year after years expanding their geographic footprints even while they offer new benefits. In Aetna’s most recent quarter, the company was already showing signs of management’s ability to get a handle on rising health costs.
Health insurance industry pleas to the Trump administration to increase reimbursement rates to Medicare Advantage plans are expected to be answered, Wall Street analysts say.
“For the 2027 MA Advance Notice, we believe an additional positive rate increase will increase investor confidence in the margin recovery story across the managed care industry and will be a key catalyst,” Mizuho Americas research analyst Ann Hynes wrote in a note last week.
“Based on our discussions with MA-focused actuaries, we believe the potential for a mid-single digit to high-single digits rate increase is plausible given the Medicare fee-for-service medical cost trend used as the basis for the MA rate adjustment is likely in the high-single digit range (+9-10%) similar to the final 2026 rate announcement,” Hynes wrote. “Currently, we believe the Street is expecting a +5.0% rate increase and any increases above this will be positive for the managed care companies.”