UPDATED: July 16 at 1 p.m. ET
UnitedHealth Group outperformed investor expectations in the second quarter, and CEO Stephen Hemsley was asked to reflect on a year of work in righting the ship after he returned to the helm.
Hemsley said that while the team has made significant progress toward its goals, UHG will remain "restless" in pushing toward improvement. And that improvement doesn't stop with margin growth, extending toward the ultimate goal of improving the healthcare system.
"We are never going to not be in improvement and urgency mode," Hemsley said. "This is not just about returning to a growth rate. This is also about making this company perform in levels and in areas and spaces consistent with its mission, and to really provide a positive impact to all those we serve and across the health system."
"That broader mission is a restless one," he continued. "It's a journey, and it's not going to stop."
Hemsley added that the team has consistently believed in a long-term growth rate of between 13% and 16%, which the company is aiming to reach by 2028.
He said that reaching that goal range will require ongoing investment and the deployment of capital, but that there's significant opportunity in those investments, particularly where technology is concerned.
UnitedHealth is investing nearly $3 billion in artificial intelligence across its enterprise, for example. And while that carries a hefty upfront cost, the company has touted the efficiencies in can produce in the long-term, with deployments ranging from accelerating prior authorization decisions to equipping patients with cost data to supporting call center agents.
Technology, Hemsley said, offers opportunities that "are even greater than they've been in the past," given the rapid evolution of these platforms.
The company's earnings report on Thursday morning detailed a slew of steps that it's taken to improve governance and transparency as well as improve affordability for members and plan sponsors.
That effort has included conducting reviews of multiple internal programs and initiatives, such as HouseCalls, which has drawn ire from critics for the role it may play in "upcoding" Medicare Advantage enrollees to secure higher payments.
FTI Consulting conducted an independent review of HouseCalls, with the results released earlier this month. In its review, the analysts examined a sample of 200 visits that included 494 diagnoses, and found that 97% were supported by medical records.
The first reviews in this series were released in December 2025, and at the time the company agreed to adopt 23 action plans for improvement, with the work on those initiatives completed by March.
"We did obviously have challenges in the last couple of years, but we are addressing those challenges and returning to form, and that's kind of the way we think of it," Hemsley said.
PUBLISHED: July 16 at 7:15 a.m. ET
UnitedHealth Group boosted its outlook for the year on the back of $5.5 billion in profit for the second quarter.
The healthcare giant reported its Q2 earnings on Thursday morning, and its profit results surpassed Wall Street analysts' predictions, according to Zacks Investment Research. By comparison, the company earned $3.4 billion in profit during the prior-year quarter.
UnitedHealth similarly beat the Street on revenue in Q2, posting $112 billion. That's also an increase year-over-year from the $111.6 billion the company reported in the second quarter of 2025.
One area where the company saw significant improvement is its medical loss ratio, which was 86.7% in the second quarter. It reported an MLR of 89.4% a year ago.
The company said this shift "reflected product design changes, improved medical management and better aligned pricing," per the earnings report.
Based on the quarter's results, UHG said it now expects to earn between $19.50 and $20 in earnings per share, up from a previous projection of at least $18.25. Given the performance, especially the reduction in medical costs, shares in the company were up by 6.3% premarket, according to MarketWatch.
At UnitedHealthcare, revenue dipped slightly year over year from $86.1 billion in Q2 2025 to $86 billion in the second quarter of 2026. The insurer covered 48.5 million people as of June 30, down 525,000 from the first quarter of this year.
The company said it's seen contraction in both Medicaid and Medicare Advantage, with the latter shrinking by 965,000 since the end of 2025.
Optum also posted a rare revenue dip in the quarter, declining from $67.2 billion in the prior-year quarter to $65.7 billion in Q2 2026. Its troubled Optum Health unit has shown "steady momentum," the company said, though revenue declined year-over-year as it cared for about 700,000 fewer value-based care patients.
In the earnings report, UnitedHealth also offered a deep dive into steps it has taken to address affordability, transparency and simplicity across its businesses. Those commitments have been central to the last year of work at the company following CEO Stephen Hemsley's return to the post in May 2025.
"Our results and outlook reflect the continuing progress in our work to simplify how we operate, improve both affordability and the health care experience for patients and care providers and apply modern technology to create real improvement for people," Hemsley said in the earnings release.
Highlights include the launch of a new Public Responsibility Committee as well as its decision to publish a series of reviews of its business practices, ranging from risk adjustment to drugmaker discounts, with all recommendations from those reviews rolled out.
UnitedHealth Group is also leading the industry in a broader effort to reshape and modernize prior authorization. Per the report, the company will eliminate 30% of its current prior approval volume by the end of this year, including nixing two-thirds of prior auth requirements in pediatric care.
It has worked to expand provider eligibility for its Gold Card program, which exempts high performers from prior auth entirely, as well as shift to electronic submissions. UHG expects more than 70% of submissions to be electronic by the end of 2026.
The company has also extended this approach to its pharmacy benefits, and has eliminated close to 33% of drug reauthorizations. It unveiled its new transparent, fee-based pharmacy benefit management model, which aims to offer greater clarity and predictability for both the member and plan sponsor.
In the release, UHG said these efforts "reflect the company’s deep commitment to helping people live healthier lives and helping make the health system work better for everyone."