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Founded by Wendell Cherry in 1961.1
1961–1983: Nursing homes and hospitals
Lawyers David A. Jones Sr. and Wendell Cherry founded a nursing home company in 1961. The company, known in 1968 as Extendicare Inc., became the largest nursing home company in the United States. In 1972, Jones and Cherry sold the nursing home chain to purchase hospitals. Humana became one of the first two for-profit hospital ventures in the U.S. along with Hospital Corporation of America (HCA).
In 1974, the partners changed the corporate name to Humana Inc. It grew in the following years, both by business and in 1978 through the takeover of American Medicorp Inc., which doubled the company's size, and grew into the world's largest hospital company in the 1980s.
1984–present
As the American health care system changed in the 1980s, "one of its hospitals in Arizona lost a contract with the largest health-maintenance organization in the area [and] Humana created its own health insurance plan."
In 1993, Humana executives spun off hospital operations from health insurance operations to create Galen Health Care. The following year they sold the 73 hospitals of Galen Health Care Inc. to Nashville-based Columbia Hospital Corporation of America for $3.4 billion.
In 1998, one year after Jones had stepped aside as CEO, UnitedHealthcare made an unsuccessful attempt to acquire Humana. Humana pulled out of the acquisition after United stock dropped $2.9 billion in value.
In 2010, Humana returned to providing healthcare services when it bought Texas-based Concentra Inc., which owns urgent-care and physical therapy centers, for $790 million. They went on to sell Concentra again in 2015 for $1 billion.
In July 2015, Aetna announced that it would acquire Humana for $37 billion. However, the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division alleged the acquisition would be anticompetitive and sued to block the transaction. Following a trial, U.S. district judge John D. Bates of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia agreed and issued an injunction blocking the acquisition. In February 2017, Aetna and Humana cancelled a $34 billion merger agreement after judges ruled against the merger for a second time.
In July 2018, Humana joined two private equity firms in the acquisition of Kindred Healthcare. The deal provided Humana with a 40% stake in the company's home health, hospice and community care businesses, called "Kindred at Home," for approximately $800 million.
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In 2021, Susan Diamond, formerly occupying an interim position, was announced to be the new permanent CFO.
In 2024 Humana announced that they would be leaving the Humana Building, which they had occupied since the 1980s, in order to cut costs. Humana said that it planned to consolidate its workforce in its Waterside-Clocktower campus.
In 2026 KFF reported that Humana was the second-largest parent organization for Medicare Advantage by overall enrollment, and that it had the largest growth in that sector that year.
From Wikipedia’s article on Humana, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8