{"id":15959,"date":"2026-05-12T23:28:47","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T23:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/12\/big-insurance-q1-2026-earnings-round-up-health-care-un-covered\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T23:28:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T23:28:47","slug":"big-insurance-q1-2026-earnings-round-up-health-care-un-covered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/12\/big-insurance-q1-2026-earnings-round-up-health-care-un-covered\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Insurance Q1 2026 Earnings Round Up – HEALTH CARE un-covered"},"content":{"rendered":"

The most recent numbers the nation\u2019s largest for-profit health insurers have shared with investors tell a story the industry is eager to tell Wall Street: the worst is over. After two brutal years of earnings misses, executive firings, and stock price collapses driven by unexpectedly high medical spending, the seven biggest publicly traded health insurers have now completed their first-quarter earnings reports for 2026 and their shareholders are cheering.
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Every one of them beat analysts\u2019 expectations in various ways, and most raised their full-year 2026 guidance. But before you read the company-by-company results, it is worth examining the mechanisms behind that recovery because the story the earnings releases tell is not quite the same as the story they leave out.
To get back into Wall Street\u2019s good graces, insurers have:<\/strong>
raised premiums
cut benefits
narrowed their provider networks
exited markets that weren\u2019t meeting investors\u2019 profit expectations, and
shed members they deemed too costly to cover.
Across the seven companies, total medical membership fell by roughly four million people between the first quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, and from what executives signaled to investors, many more people likely will be dumped by the end of the year. The patients who already have lost coverage through market exits or who found their benefits reduced this year do not appear as line items in an earnings release. They appear in the year-over-year membership declines and skimpier benefits that analysts note with approval.
In second episode of the <\/span>HEALTH CARE un-covered Show<\/strong><\/em>, we walk you through the full year 2025 earnings reports of seven of the largest for-profit health insurance corporations in the country.<\/span>
The key metric driving the recovery is the medical loss ratio \u2014 the percentage of premium revenue that insurers actually spend on medical care. When that number falls, profits rise and investors get richer. Across the sector, medical loss ratios came down in the first quarter, or at least came in lower than Wall Street feared. Insurers credited tighter cost management, a milder flu season, and \u201crepricing\u201d \u2014 the practice of raising premiums and cutting benefits, particularly in Medicare Advantage plans, to close the gap between what they collect and what they pay out. (Financial analysts\u2019 term for this is benefit buydown, which is unique among American industries.) Higher revenue coupled with devalued benefits produces better medical loss ratios from investors\u2019 perspective.
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The stock market has responded \u2014 but the picture is more complicated than a simple sector rebound. Most of these stocks are up year to date, measured from deeply depressed December 31 baselines. But look back a full year and a different story emerges: four of the seven companies are still worth less today than they were a year ago. Molina is down 43% over that period. Cigna and Elevance are each down about 6%. The \u201crecovery\u201d is real in the sense that stocks have bounced off their bottoms.
For much of the sector, it is not yet a return to <\/span>full health<\/em>, but the companies clearly are making good on their assurances to investors that they will do whatever it takes to improve their profit margins, regardless of the consequences to patients.<\/span>
Here is what each of the seven reported \u2014 and what each report left out.<\/strong>
UNH <\/strong>Close (May 11): $384.44 YTD: <\/span>+17.4%<\/strong> 1-year: <\/span>+4.4%<\/strong> Dec 31: $327.56 | May 12, 2025: $368.36<\/span>
UnitedHealth Group, the nation\u2019s largest health insurer, reported first-quarter 2026 revenues of $111.7 billion, with adjusted earnings of $7.23 per share and a medical loss ratio of 83.9% \u2014 well below the 85.5% analysts had expected. The company raised its full-year adjusted earnings guidance to more than $18.25 per share.
UnitedHealth attributed the year-over-year declinedecline in its medical loss ratio to strong medical cost management and favorable reserve development, while acknowledging \u201cconsistently elevated utilization and unit cost trends.\u201d In plain terms: patients are still using more care than the company would prefer, but UnitedHealth is getting better at managing around it.
The stock\u2019s 17% year-to-date gain requires context. UnitedHealth ended 2025 at $327.56 \u2014 the result of a punishing year that included the Change Healthcare cyberattack, the killing of its insurance CEO, and mounting federal scrutiny of its Medicare Advantage risk-scoring practices. Then this past January, a disappointing fourth-quarter 2025 earnings report sent shares plunging nearly 20% in a single session, pushing the stock to its recent lows before the partial recovery began to take hold. The May 11 close of $384.44 leaves the stock about 4% above where it was a year ago \u2014 a modest gain that reflects recovery from a deep hole rather than a return to anything resembling its former heights.
CVS <\/strong>Close (May 11): $92.23 YTD: <\/span>+18.2%<\/strong> 1-year: <\/span>+47.5%<\/strong> Dec 31: $78.03 | May 12, 2025: $62.52<\/span>
CVS Health reported first-quarter net income of more than $2.9 billion as costs slowed for subscribers of its Aetna health plans. The company\u2019s medical loss ratio fell to 84.6%, compared to 87.3% in the same period a year ago.
CVS attributed thedecline primarily to better underlying performance in its government business and the absence of a premium deficiency reserve recorded in the prior year \u2014 a liability an insurer must set aside when anticipated claims are expected to exceed the premiums it has collected. Its absence is itself a sign of improved financial positioning.
Total revenue grew more than 6% to $100.4 billion. CVS raised its diluted earnings per share guidance and confirmed it is exiting the individual Affordable Care Act marketplace after this year. Total medical enrollment fell by roughly 600,000 members compared to year-end 2024, and more than one million year-over-year. This marked CVS\u2019s fifth consecutive quarterly earnings beat.
CVS tells the clearest turnaround story in the group. Its stock is up 18% year to date and up nearly 48% from where it traded a year ago, when the company was in the depths of its earnings crisis and had just replaced its CEO. The trajectory is unambiguous \u2014 and so is the strategy behind it.
\u201cMargins over membership\u201d<\/strong><\/em>
That recovery was not an accident. It was a stated strategy. CVS CEO David Joyner has said repeatedly over the past year that the company is prioritizing \u201cmargins over membership\u201d in its Medicare Advantage business. That means exactly what it says: CVS would rather have fewer, more profitable enrollees than a larger membership it cannot price to break even. On the commercial side, Joyner made the same calculus equally plain. \u201cWe do see elevated trends. We took a disciplined pricing approach to that in 2025, which has pressured membership, but we\u2019re going to stay disciplined in our pricing approach,\u201d he told investors last August.
\u201cPressured membership\u201d is the corporate euphemism. What it describes is people being priced out of their plans, and what it means is that Aetna is once again purging customers it considers a drag on profit margins. (It has done that frequently over the past 25 years.)
The membership losses CVS reported this quarter \u2014 roughly 600,000 members gone, more than a million year-over-year \u2014 are the direct result of that strategy. Wall Street loved it.
CI <\/strong>Close (May 11): $289.00 YTD: <\/span>+5.6%<\/strong> 1-year: <\/span>\u22126.5%<\/strong> Dec 31: $273.72 | May 12, 2025: $309.20<\/span>
Cigna beat analysts on both earnings and revenue in the first quarter, posting $1.65 billion in profit. Its medical loss ratio came in at 79.8%, a favorable shift from the 82.2% posted a year earlier.
Cigna\u2019s unusually low medical loss ratio reflects both aggressive cost management and a significant structural change. The MLR decline is partly attributable to the removal of its Medicare Advantage business, following Cigna\u2019s sale of that book of business to Health Care Service Corporation. Medicare Advantage has been the primary driver of elevated medical costs across the industry. Cigna\u2019s complete exit from MA made the numbers look cleaner.
Cigna also announced it will exit the individual ACA exchange market beginning in 2027. The company raised its full-year 2026 adjusted earnings guidance to at least $30.35 per share.
Evernorth, Cigna\u2019s pharmacy benefit management and health services arm, generated $58.4 billion in revenue for the quarter, far more than the company\u2019s health plan division. Like its peers, Cigna is increasingly a pharmacy and services company that also sells health insurance \u2014 not the other way around. (CVS now takes in more revenue from its PBM, Caremark, than from Aetna\u2019s health plans and the company\u2019s 9,000 retail stores.) Cigna\u2019s stock has recovered to a 5.6% year-to-date gain but remains down about 6.5% from a year ago. A strong quarter has not answered the underlying question investors are asking: now that Cigna has exited Medicare Advantage and is exiting the ACA market, where does future growth come from?
ELV <\/strong>Close (May 11): $381.84 YTD: <\/span>+9.6%<\/strong> 1-year: <\/span>\u22126.4%<\/strong> Dec 31: $348.40 | May 12, 2025: $407.98<\/span>
Elevance Health (previously known as Anthem) reported $1.8 billion in first-quarter profit, down about 19% from the same period a year earlier, though the results exceeded Wall Street expectations. The company, which operates Blue Cross plans in 14 states, posted a medical loss ratio of 86.8% \u2014 slightly higher than a year ago, reflecting elevated costs in its Medicaid business, but better than analysts had feared.
Adjusted earnings per share came in at $12.58, above analysts\u2019 consensus expectations. Elevance also raised its full-year 2026 adjusted earnings guidance.
One significant complication: Elevance\u2019s results included a $935 million accrual tied to Medicare Advantage risk-adjustment data the company had previously submitted to federal regulators, where the ultimate liability remains uncertain. Risk-adjustment data \u2014 the system by which Medicare Advantage plans submit diagnosis codes to justify higher payments \u2014 has come under increasing regulatory scrutiny as a driver of what federal analysts estimate are tens of billions of dollars in annual overpayments to private insurers.
CEO Gail Boudreaux told investors that the company saw \u201cmoderately stronger retention\u201d in its ACA segment and attributed better-than-expected results partly to a shift by remaining enrollees toward bronze-tier coverage \u2014 lower-premium, higher-deductible plans that tend to see lower utilization in the early months of the year. The stock is up nearly 10% year to date but remains about 6% below where it traded a year ago, with the risk-adjustment liability an unresolved overhang.
HUM <\/strong>Close (May 11): $274.24 YTD: <\/span>+7.6%<\/strong> 1-year: <\/span>+10.2%<\/strong> Dec 31: $254.84 | May 12, 2025: $248.93<\/span>
Humana\u2019s first-quarter results were the most complicated of the group \u2014 a beat on paper, but with enough asterisks to keep analysts cautious.
The company\u2019s insurance segment MLR came in at 89.4%, edging out its own target of just under 90%, with medical and pharmacy cost trends running somewhat lower than anticipated. Revenue for the quarter reached $39.6 billion, up sharply from $32.1 billion a year earlier, driven largely by a 25% surge in Medicare Advantage enrollment.
But Humana did not raise its full-year guidance, unlike most of its peers. The company said it expects its second-quarter medical loss ratio to come in slightly above 91%, a deterioration from the first quarter \u2014 a signal that the cost pressures driving last year\u2019s sector-wide crisis have not fully abated \u2013 and the expectation that Humana picked up many of the more costly MA enrollees that its competitors dropped.
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Humana confirmed it expects to earn at least $9 per share for the full year and projects a full-year medical loss ratio of 92.75%, far higher than its rivals. Humana executives said the company\u2019s primary objective is returning to a sustainable individual Medicare Advantage margin of at least 3% by 2028. Getting there will require continued benefit cuts, premium increases, and geographic retreats \u2014 all of which bear directly on the Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in Humana\u2019s plans. What that means is that Humana likely will purge many of its new MA enrollees in the same way it did in 2025 after it disappointed Wall Street the year before.
Humana\u2019s stock recovered sharply after the Q1 report, closing Monday at $274.24 \u2014 up nearly 8% year to date and up about 10% from a year ago. But investors\u2019 enthusiasm should be tempered by one number: Humana\u2019s aggressive Medicare Advantage membership growth this quarter mirrors exactly what CVS did in 2024, just before badly missing its cost targets as expenses came in far higher than expected. If that pattern repeats, the recovery will be short-lived.
CNC <\/strong>Close (May 11): $56.35 YTD: <\/span>+36.9%<\/strong> 1-year: <\/span>\u221210.4%<\/strong> Dec 31: $41.15 | May 12, 2025: $62.87<\/span>
Centene kicked off the year with better-than-expected revenue and adjusted earnings, signaling a recovery from a rough 2025. Its stock rose more than 13% the day after its earnings call \u2014 and at nearly 37% year to date, it is the strongest year-to-date performer in the sector so far in 2026.
The company posted total revenues of $49.9 billion, with its consolidated medical loss ratio falling slightly to 87.3%. Adjusted diluted earnings per share came in at $3.37, and Centene raised its full-year adjusted EPS guidance to above $3.40.
Centene is primarily a Medicaid and ACA marketplace insurer, and its recovery story is rooted in those markets. The company\u2019s Medicaid medical loss ratio fell half a percentage point \u2014 driven by rate increases from states and continued cost management.
The ACA marketplace, however, remains a source of volatility. Centene\u2019s ACA enrollment fell sharply as the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits pushed many lower-income consumers out of the market \u2014 a policy shift that, for Centene, paradoxically helped near-term financial results by reducing exposure to a segment that had been generating losses.
As with the rest of the sector, context matters. Centene ended 2025 at $41.15, deeply depressed from its year-ago price of $62.87. The stock has bounced hard off that bottom but remains down more than 10% from where it stood a year ago. The recovery is real but the hole it is recovering from is also real.
MOH <\/strong>Close (May 11): $185.17 YTD: <\/span>+6.7%<\/strong> 1-year: <\/span>\u221243.5%<\/strong> Dec 31: $173.54 | May 12, 2025: $327.69<\/span>
Molina is the outlier in the sector\u2019s recovery narrative \u2014 the one company whose headline numbers looked genuinely bad, even as management insisted the underlying story was better than it appeared.
Molina reported a 95% year-over-year drop in net income for the first quarter, falling to just $14 million from $298 million in the same period last year. The collapse was driven primarily by a one-time charge: a $93 million impairment of intangible assets tied to the company\u2019s planned 2027 exit from the Medicare Advantage\u2013Part D market.
Total revenue was $10.8 billion, with premium revenue down about 4% year over year. The consolidated medical loss ratio rose to 91.1%, up from 89.2% in the first quarter of 2025.
The company\u2019s executives reaffirmed full-year guidance for about $42 billion in premium revenue and at least $5 in adjusted earnings per share, and CEO Joe Zubretsky called the quarter \u201csolid under the circumstances.\u201d Molina has described 2026 as a \u201ctrough year\u201d for its Medicaid margins, with the expectation that new contracts and the exit from unprofitable Medicare lines will improve results in 2027.
The stock market has rendered a harsher verdict. Molina\u2019s shares are down 43% from where they traded a year ago \u2014 by far the worst one-year performance in the sector. The 7% year-to-date gain is recovery from a floor, not a foundation. Investors who held the stock through 2025 have lost nearly half their money.
From Wall Street\u2019s perspective, the industry has stabilized. Whether the companies\u2019 management teams have learned anything different is a question the second quarter will begin to answer.
Analysts have flagged Q2 as especially critical \u2014 particularly for Humana, whose aggressive Medicare Advantage membership growth while holding benefits stable mirrors a pattern CVS followed in 2024, before badly missing its medical loss ratio targets. If that pattern repeats, the stock gains of recent months will not hold.
More broadly, the mechanisms driving this quarter\u2019s \u201crecovery\u201d \u2014 premium hikes, benefit cuts, member shedding, and structural exits from unprofitable markets \u2014 are not cost reductions. They are cost shifts. The medical spending did not go away. It was simply transferred: onto patients through higher out-of-pocket costs, onto states through Medicaid pressure, and onto the federal government through the ongoing overpayment dynamics in Medicare Advantage that regulators have not yet fully addressed.
Wall Street calls this a recovery but it is worth being precise about what has actually been recovered and what has simply been moved off the balance sheet and onto someone else\u2019s.
Bring back Bernie and pass Medicare for All.<\/span>
And they lobbied to hike rates in Medicare to 2.31% and remove provisions aimed at lowering cost for the sickest patients.<\/span>
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The most recent numbers the nation\u2019s largest for-profit health insurers have shared with investors tell a story the industry is eager to tell Wall Street: the worst is over. After two brutal years of earnings misses, executive firings, and stock price collapses driven by unexpectedly high medical spending, the seven biggest publicly traded health insurers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}