UnitedHealth Group’s (NYSE: UNH) subsidiary Optum Health’s efforts to reorient its strategic approach are beginning to bear fruit in rising revenues. 

The company projected slow but steady growth in 2026, despite headwinds such as Medicare reimbursement reductions and rising competition in the health care landscape.

The insurance giant and health care provider UnitedHealth Group has experienced slower than anticipated revenue growth across its business lines throughout 2025. Nevertheless, UnitedHealth Group is anticipating a rebound in coming years amid rising demand for health care services, Chairman and CEO Stephen Hemsley said in an earnings call on Tuesday.

“We’re getting at the core of the underperformance issues with fresh perspectives, intent on positioning our organization as a positive and innovative leader helping to advance the next era of health care,” Hemsley said during the earnings call. “Simply put, we will end 2025 well-positioned for a return to solid growth in 2026 and acceleration in 2027 and a clear focus on our long standing mission and strategy.”

UnitedHealth Group projected its overall revenue to reach $445.5–$448.0 billion by the end of 2025 in its second quarter earnings report. The company’s Q3 consolidated revenues reached $113.2 billion, representing a 12% year-over-year increase. The climb was attributed to growth within UnitedHealthcare, the company’s insurance arm, and Optum.

Revenues at the insurance mammoth UnitedHealthcare reached $87.1 billion that quarter, a 16% rise year over year.

The health services business Optum operates three subsidiaries: Optum Health, OptumRx and its technology health services division Optum Insight. The company’s consolidated third quarter revenues held at $69.2 billion, seeing an 8% year-over-year increase.

The rise was attributed to growth in Optum Rx’s revenues, which rose by 16% compared to last year and reached $39.7 billion. Optum Health’s revenue reached $25.9 billion in Q3, falling flat compared to the same period last year, while Optum Insight’s revenues held at $4.9 billion that quarter.

“In our less mature businesses such as Optum Health and Optum Insight, our efforts to improve operations and make needed investments will show more measured progress in 2026 and will take more time to fully bear fruit,” Hemsley said.

Minnesota-headquartered Optum was founded in 2011 and has about 310,000 employees. The company provides hospice and palliative care, post-acute and pharmacy services, behavioral health, as well as ambulatory surgical, primary, urgent and in-home care, among other services.

Optum projected a 1% year-over-year margin improvement across all of its business lines in 2026, despite citing headwinds such as recent and future Medicare funding cuts.

“External challenges will remain, including continued headwinds in 2026 from the third year of nearly $50 billion in industry-wide Medicare cuts by the previous administration, as well as Medicaid funding and program pressures,” Hemsley said.

Large health systems have increasingly expanded across the continuum in recent years, a trend that has impacted growth and competition, according to Optum CEO Dr. Patrick Conway

Optum recently launched an “agenda of change” designed to bolster its health care service offerings, Conway. The agenda includes refocusing on more effective health care delivery practices to improve outcomes and costs alongside deeper integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technology will help the company reach a wider base of underserved patient populations, Conway previously indicated.

“Our efforts [are] to restore Optum Health to its original intent around value based care, which experience continues to show us is the optimal model to deliver the right care at the right time and the right setting for the best outcomes at the lowest cost to the people we serve, particularly in light of current cost trends and the market dominance of the large health systems over the last few years through a period of rapid expansion,” Conway said during the earnings call. “We now see the alignment of our end-to-end technology and AI innovation efforts coming into formation.”

Optum Health and Optum Insight are at the forefront of UnitedHealth’s investment efforts. The company anticipates allocating more financial resources to swell these business lines in 2026, which could slow growth in the coming year but pay off in terms of increased revenue by 2027, according to Wayne DeVeydt, CFO of UnitedHealth Group.

UnitedHealth in the near future will be paying down debt and identifying opportunities to reduce its borrowing interest expenses as a result of the declining rate environment, DeVeydt said.

The company is integrating assets such as the acquisition of Amedisys, which recently cleared regulatory approval following antitrust concerns. Optum, in June 2023 inked its agreement to acquire Amedisys in an all-cash transaction of $101 per share, or about $3.3 billion. That same year the company closed its $5.4 billion acquisition of the home health and hospice giant LHC Group.

UnitedHealth’s debt-to-capital ratio reached 44.1% in Q3, which was unchanged consecutively from the second quarter and included the impact of closing the Amedisys transaction.

“We have paused our strategic acquisitions and share buyback while we dedicate our cash to returning to a long-term debt-to-capital ratio around 40% and interest coverage ratios in line with historic levels in the third quarter,” DeVedyt said. “Further investment in Optum Health and Optum Insight is needed, and we are accelerating some of those investments. We are also accelerating our pace of AI applications to fundamentally advance a vast spectrum of processes and capabilities. We expect it will structurally improve our enterprise performance.”