Humana Medicare Advantage Review 2027: From Worst-Rated to Best-Rated in a Year

This article is for general educational purposes only and is not insurance or medical advice. We are not affiliated with the U.S. government, Medicare, or Humana. For official information, visit Medicare.gov or call 1-800-MEDICARE. See our Medical & Financial Disclaimer for details.

Humana is the only large Medicare Advantage insurer growing quickly right now. It holds 20% of Medicare Advantage enrollment in 2026, up from 17% in 2025, with 7 million members — 1.3 million more than a year ago, while the market leader lost nearly 647,000.

For 2026 the share of Humana members in plans rated four stars or better fell from 25% to 20%, the company sued CMS over it twice and lost twice, and eight hospital systems stopped taking its plans. Then, on October 8, 2026, CMS published the 2027 ratings and Humana went from the bottom of the large insurers to the top: about 93% of its members are now in plans rated four stars or better. That swing is the review. Humana’s ratings have recovered; the hospital departures have not, and there is still one specific thing you must check before you sign anything.

What Humana Actually Offers in 2027

Rather than repeat figures from brokers, we went through the CMS Landscape file ourselves, counted every Humana plan on sale for 2027, matched each one to its new star rating, and set the result beside Humana’s 2026 lineup. The method is at the end of this article.

From the CMS plan file	Humana 2027	All Medicare Advantage plans 2027	Humana 2026
Distinct plans on sale	861	5,522	887
States and territories	46	—	47
Counties served	2,600 of 3,131 (83%)	3,131	2,657 of 3,147 (84%)
Plans with no monthly premium at all	78.5%	69.7%	66.5%
Median in-network out-of-pocket limit	$6,750	$7,100	$6,500
Plans capped at the legal maximum ($9,850 in 2027, $9,250 in 2026)	26.9%	28.2%	25.5%
Mean overall star rating	4.16	3.86	3.76
Rated plans at 4 stars or better	93.6%	61.2%	35.5%
Special needs plans	240	1,969	234

On cost and coverage Humana is a little better than average for 2027: its median out-of-pocket limit is $6,750 against the market’s $7,100, and it puts 26.9% of its plans at the new legal ceiling against 28.2% market-wide — where Aetna leaves more than a third of its plans at that ceiling. Where it is clearly better than average is reach and price — 83% of counties in the country, and 78.5% of its plans charging no monthly premium at all against 69.7% market-wide.

Quality is where the year changed most. For 2026 only 35.5% of Humana’s rated plans reached four stars, against 60.5% across the market — a third of the field against more than half. For 2027 the figure is 93.6%, against 61.2% market-wide, and its mean rating rose from 3.76 to 4.16, the highest of any national insurer we count. Only Kaiser Permanente, which sells in 118 counties, does better. Our comparison of Humana with UnitedHealthcare sets the two side by side.

Its plan mix is unusual too. Humana is the PPO insurer among the giants: 323 of its 2027 plans are PPOs against 221 HMOs, where its main rival is built around HMO-POS. If keeping some out-of-network freedom matters to you, that is a real structural advantage, and our HMO versus PPO comparison explains what it buys you.

Check Your Hospital Before You Enroll. This Year It Matters.

This is the part of the review that could cost you money if you skip it.

Becker’s Hospital Review tracks health systems leaving Medicare Advantage networks, and its 2026 list is a running one rather than a fixed tally: it stood at 30 systems across all insurers when we read it on September 20, 2026, and Becker’s keeps adding to it, so the figure you find today will be higher. Eight of those 30 dropped Humana specifically: Mayo Clinic, UNC Health, St. Luke’s Health System, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Moffitt Cancer Center, Centra Health, Montrose Regional Health and Kettering Health.

Some of those are among the best-known names in American medicine, and two are major cancer centers. If you are being treated at one of them, or you live in a region where one is the principal hospital, a Humana plan that worked last year may not work this year. The effective dates vary by system, which makes it worse rather than better: the change may not coincide with your plan year.

Do not rely on the fact that your card worked in 2025. Check each doctor and each hospital against the specific plan’s own directory, and call the hospital’s billing office if the directory is ambiguous. This is worth twenty minutes.

The Star Ratings: Two Lawsuits, Then a Rebound

Star ratings are not a beauty contest. Plans rated four stars or higher earn bonus payments from CMS, and those bonuses fund the extras that make a plan attractive, so a rating drop tends to show up in next year’s benefits.

Humana’s fall was severe enough that it went to court. Its first suit was dismissed in July 2025 because it had not exhausted its administrative appeals with CMS. It filed again, and on October 14, 2025, the case was dismissed with prejudice — the judge found that CMS’s no-callbacks policy for interpreter availability test calls was lawful, and that the ratings were therefore neither arbitrary nor capricious. Analysts quoted in that report estimate the drop could cost Humana upwards of $1 billion in revenue.

The 2027 ratings, published by CMS on October 8, 2026, reversed that fall. Two different figures describe it, and they measure different things. About 93% is the share of Humana members in four-star-or-better plans for 2027, up from 20%, weighted by how many people are in each plan, as reported by Fierce Healthcare. Our 93.6% is the share of Humana plans that reach four stars, counting each plan once, up from 35.5%. A year ago the two figures were far apart, because Humana’s largest plans scored worse than its smaller ones. For 2027 they agree, which means the improvement reached the plans most people are actually in.

What this means in practice is that a company’s reputation for quality, good or bad, is at most a year old, and the company average still tells you little about the plan in your county: 54 of Humana’s rated 2027 plans are below four stars. Look up the star rating of the individual plan you are considering, which the Medicare Plan Finder shows, and read our guide to what the score is made of before you weigh it.

The Part B Giveback

Humana’s most distinctive benefit is the Part B giveback, where the plan pays part of your standard Part B premium and the deduction from your Social Security payment shrinks accordingly. On a $202.90 monthly premium that is real money, and few competitors push it as hard.

Two things to hold in mind. The Social Security Administration takes time to reflect the change, so the first months often look unchanged. And the giveback is funded from the same rebate money that would otherwise buy a lower out-of-pocket limit or richer extras — so the plans with the largest givebacks are frequently not the plans with the best protection. Compare the whole package, and in particular check the out-of-pocket limit of any plan advertising a large giveback.

Veterans: the USAA Honor Plans

Humana sells 66 plans for 2027 under the USAA Honor branding, down from 81 in 2026, designed around veterans and how Medicare interacts with VA benefits. They are Humana plans, underwritten and administered by Humana, carrying the USAA name; USAA is not a separate insurer here. If you are a veteran, they are worth looking at on their merits, and worth comparing against Humana’s ordinary plans in your county rather than assumed to be better.

Who Humana Suits, and Who It Doesn’t

It suits you if you want a PPO rather than an HMO, if you live somewhere with few insurers and Humana is one of the serious options, if the Part B giveback is worth more to you than a slightly lower out-of-pocket limit, or if you are a veteran and the Honor plans price well in your county.

It suits you less if you are treated at one of the eight systems that have left, if the Humana plans sold in your county sit near the $9,850 out-of-pocket ceiling, or if you are shopping in a competitive market where a plan with a lower limit is available at the same price. In California, Florida or Pennsylvania, you have the luxury of being picky; our state-by-state analysis shows how much choice your own market has. If Kaiser Permanente is sold in your county, our Humana versus Kaiser comparison covers that choice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did hospitals really drop Humana for 2026? Yes. Eight health systems named on Becker’s 2026 list stopped taking Humana Medicare Advantage, including Mayo Clinic, UNC Health and St. Luke’s Health System. Verify your own providers against the specific plan before enrolling.

Is Humana’s star rating a reason to avoid it? Not for 2027. 93.6% of its rated 2027 plans reach four stars, against 61.2% market-wide, up from about a third a year earlier. Still check the individual plan rather than trust the brand: 54 of its rated plans are below four stars.

How much is the Part B giveback worth? It varies by plan and county, so no national figure applies. What is fixed is the ceiling: it cannot exceed the standard Part B premium of $202.90 a month.

Is USAA Honor a different insurer? No. These are Humana plans sold under the USAA name, 66 of them for 2027 by our count of the CMS file, down from 81.

How did Humana’s ratings change so much in one year? CMS rates contracts, not plans, and a large insurer’s plans share a handful of contracts. When a few big contracts move, most of the company moves with them, in either direction. The practical lesson is that last year’s reputation is not this year’s rating; read the 2027 rating on the plan itself.

Bottom Line

Humana for 2027 is wide, cheap, slightly better than average on cost protection and, a year after sitting at the bottom of the large insurers, the best-rated national insurer at plan level. It is also the insurer that has just lost eight hospital systems including two major cancer centers, and the new ratings do nothing to change that.

None of that makes it the automatic choice. It makes it a choice to verify rather than assume: the specific plan’s star rating, the specific plan’s out-of-pocket limit, and above all whether your hospital still takes it. Confirm all three on the official Medicare Plan Finder, or with your State Health Insurance Assistance Program, which is free and sells nothing.

How We Counted Humana’s Plans

The plan figures in this review are our own count of the CY2027 and CY2026 Landscape files published by CMS in September 2026. The 2027 star figures come from matching each plan’s contract to its overall rating in the 2027 Star Ratings data tables CMS published on October 8, 2026; the 2026 star figures use the ratings carried in the 2026 file. The full method — which plan categories we keep, and how we reduce a county-by-county file to one entry per distinct plan — is set out on our editorial methodology page.

For Humana specifically, that leaves 861 distinct plans out of the 5,522 on sale nationally for 2027, and 887 out of 5,553 for 2026. Percentages are shares of those plans, not of enrollment, which is why our star figure can differ from the enrollment-weighted one quoted by CMS and by the press; both appear above. Star ratings are not published for every plan, so rating figures cover the 842 Humana plans that have one for 2027.

Sources

• CY2027 and CY2026 Medicare Advantage and Part D Landscape files — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, September 2026 versions. Source for the plan counts, county coverage, premium shares, out-of-pocket limits including the $9,850 ceiling for 2027, plan-type mix, the 2026 plan-level star ratings and the USAA Honor plan counts. All calculations from them are our own, by the method above.
• 2027 Star Ratings Data Tables — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, published October 8, 2026. Source for every 2027 plan-level star figure, matched contract by contract.
• Humana rebounds, Aetna slips: Winners and losers in the 2027 MA star ratings — Fierce Healthcare, October 9, 2026. Source for the share of Humana members in four-star-or-better plans rising from 20% to about 93%.
• Medicare Advantage in 2026: Enrollment Update and Key Trends — KFF. Source for Humana’s 20% share of enrollment in 2026, its 7 million members, the rise from 17% in 2025, and the 647,000 decline at UnitedHealth Group.
• Humana’s Medicare Advantage star ratings lawsuit dismissed again — Healthcare Dive. Source for the fall from 25% to 20% of members in four-star-or-better plans, the July 2025 dismissal, the October 14, 2025 dismissal with prejudice and its reasoning, and the analyst estimate of more than $1 billion in lost revenue.
• Health systems dropping Medicare Advantage plans in 2026 — Becker’s Hospital Review. Source for the eight systems that stopped accepting Humana Medicare Advantage. Becker’s maintains this as a running list and adds to it through the year; it held 30 systems across all insurers on September 20, 2026, the date we read it.
• Medicare Advantage in 2026: Premiums, Out-of-Pocket Limits, Supplemental Benefits, and Prior Authorization — KFF. Source for the $9,250 statutory maximum in-network out-of-pocket limit for 2026, which no Medicare Advantage plan may exceed.
• 2026 Medicare Parts A & B Premiums and Deductibles — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Source for the $202.90 standard Part B premium that caps the giveback.

All figures on this page were checked against the sources above on October 12, 2026, except the hospital list, read on September 20, 2026. Network status changes without notice; confirm your own providers on Medicare.gov before enrolling.

Disclaimer: Star ratings and plan figures reflect 2027 and 2026 data, and network information 2026 data, from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and vary by state, county and plan. Always confirm current details directly with Medicare.gov, 1-800-MEDICARE, or a licensed agent before making a decision.