Humana, gets high marks for customer satisfaction & being an all-around solid health insurance provider, is No. 5 on Insure.com’s 2023 Best Health Insurance Companies list earning 3.6 stars out of 5.
John is the editorial director for CarInsurance.com, Insurance.com and Insure.com. Before joining QuinStreet, John was a deputy editor at The Wall Street Journal and had been an editor and reporter at a number of other media outlets where he covered insurance, personal finance, and technology.
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Customers gave Humana generally high marks for being a good all-around health insurance provider, and the company ranked fifth overall in Insure.com’s Best Health Insurance Companies for 2023.
The for-profit company, which offers coverage across the country, received high marks for having a strong provider network and for its policy offerings. More than 91% of customers surveyed said they would recommend the company to others.
The company also received a strong 3.5 out of 5 stars from the National Committee for Quality Assurance. NCQA evaluates healthcare plans on, among other things, member satisfaction.
Below is Insure.com’s review of the company. It’s based on third-party metrics and an in-depth survey of insurance customers. Find the full methodology here, including an explanation of our survey scores.
AM Best's Financial Strength Rating is an independent opinion of an insurer's financial strength and ability to meet its ongoing insurance policy and contract obligations.
Humana customers rated it in the middle of the pack when it came to affordability. This didn’t seem to come at the cost of customer satisfaction, as it ranked in the top half of our survey in that category. And it received high marks for having low deductibles.
Our survey found that 88% of Humana’s customers think it does a very good job at achieving customer satisfaction, placing it in the top half of companies in our survey. It wasn’t too far behind the top company, Kaiser Permanente, which achieved high customer satisfaction marks from 93% of its customers. Humana also ranked higher than other insurers when looking at average J.D. Power 2022 U.S. Commercial Member Health Plan Study scores, which measure health plans for overall customer satisfaction.
The company does a pretty good job of handling complaints before they escalate. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) compares major providers on how many complaints are filed with state regulators. If a provider has a rate that is equal to its customer base, it receives a 1.0 score. If it has twice as many complaints as its share of business, it gets a 2.0. Humana had a score of 1.02, meaning the number of complaints filed was pretty much on par with its market share.
Another strength for Humana is its policy offerings, with 83% of customers saying they felt it had a good selection available. It had the fourth-highest score in this category. Kaiser Permanente and Blue Shield of California came out on top here.
Yes, they would. Humana had one of the highest scores in this category, with 91% of customers saying they would recommend the company to others. Only Kaiser Permanente had a higher score.
Most customers do believe they can trust Humana. It received a 72% approval rating in this category, which put it in the middle of the pack. Kaiser Permanente led the ratings at 87%.
Most do, but not all. When customers were asked if they planned to renew with Humana, 87% said they would. While high, that was in the bottom half of our survey.
Customers didn’t find the company’s website or online experience to be particularly strong. But then, few insurers did especially well in this category. The company’s MyHumana self-serve website offers many tools to check claims status, find coverage details and search for resources on its provider network. The MyHumana app has a 3 out of 5-star rating at the Apple store.
Customers gave Humana high marks for having low deductibles. The company was the third highest-rated company in this category among the companies we ranked. Blue Shield of California had the highest score in this category.
A healthcare provider network is a group of doctors, specialists and hospitals that provide services to insured members at a lower cost than providers outside the network. A strong provider network can be a key consideration when shopping for a health plan. Humana’s provider network was considered to be in the top half of the companies in the survey.
Humana has approximately 17 million members in its various medical benefit plans as well as about 5 million members in its specialty products. It has participated in Medicare for the last 30 years and offers a Medicare program in all 50 states.
Humana’s early beginnings were in the nursing home business.
In 1959, David Jones Sr. met Wendell Cherry during a job interview, and together they started a nursing home company. That company, known in 1968 as Extendicare, became the largest nursing home operation in the U.S.
In 1972, they decided to sell the nursing homes and focus instead on hospital ownership. In 1974, the partners changed the name of the business to Humana.
Humana moved into the health insurance business in 1984 when one of its hospitals in Arizona lost a contract with the main health insurer serving the state. They later spun off the hospital operations into a separate company and eventually sold the business.
In addition to offering a range of plans to individuals and families, Humana is one of the largest providers of Medicare, providing coverage in all 50 states.
Humana is recognized as being particularly good at catering to seniors and offers a number of programs to assist seniors in staying fit and healthy. Its Silver Sneakers fitness program offers online classes, organized group activities and access to fitness centers across the country.
Humana. “Humana homepage.” Accessed December 2022.
Insure.com in the fall of 2022 surveyed more than 1,500 insurance consumers (775 people with health insurance). The survey was conducted by online market research company Slice MR.
Respondents were asked to name their insurer and then grade it in the following categories – customer satisfaction, ease of service and policy offerings. The percentage of respondents who said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their insurer is presented in the results.
Survey score calculation: Respondents were then asked to rank their insurer’s top three attributes out of more than a dozen presented – such as its provider network. For a number one choice, five points were given; for a second choice, three points; and for a third choice, a single point. The total points for each choice – first, second and third – were then divided by the number of each company’s customers who responded to that survey question to create a percentage. Those percentages are presented in the results as scores.
Respondents were then asked if they would recommend their insurer to someone else and if they planned to renew their policies. The percentage who said yes is presented in the results.
They also were given the statement “I trust my insurance company” and asked if they strongly agreed, agreed, disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement. The percentage of those who said they agreed or strongly agreed is presented in the results.
The editors compiled the survey results and then selected – based on the number of survey responses – the top companies for further evaluation. Insure.com needed 20 or more of a company’s customers to respond to the survey for that insurer to be included in the ranking, although in some categories the editors did consider companies with 18 or 19 responses.
They then collected AM Best financial stability ratings and National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) ratings, which evaluate health plans on, among other things, member satisfaction.
With the help of Prof. David Marlett, Ph.D., managing director of the Brantley Risk and Insurance Center at Appalachian State University, the editors created a rating system to determine which insurance companies were best in each sector. For health insurers, we used the following weights to calculate the overall score for each company:
Each insurer was awarded from 1 to 5 stars. No insurer in our star ranking received less than 1 star and the highest possible ranking is 5 stars.