Humana has acquired Sarasota, Fla.-based MaxHealth, a primary care network owned by private equity firm Arsenal Capital Partners’ Best Value Healthcare, Bloomberg reported Feb. 12. Sources told Bloomberg the deal could value MaxHealth at about $1 billion.
The report follows comments Humana President and CEO Jim Rechtin made on the company’s Feb. 11 earnings call, when he said Humana expects to announce a strategic acquisition in the primary care space in the near future.
Humana has been steadily expanding its owned and affiliated primary care footprint. In 2025, CenterWell Senior Primary Care, focused on Medicare beneficiaries, added more than 100,000 patients, representing more than 25% year-over-year growth. That expansion included the acquisition of The Villages Health, a Florida-based system serving a large retirement community; about 32,000 patients were added through that transaction.
The company is also reporting continued Medicare Advantage growth. During the most recent annual enrollment period, Humana added about 1 million individual MA members, a 20% increase. Executives said the company plans to maintain its debt-to-capital ratio while funding membership growth and potential M&A activity, in part by leveraging non-core assets.
Humana’s primary care strategy reflects a broader shift of payers and payer-affiliated organizations are becoming major physician practice acquirers. Payer-operated practices accounted for 4.2% of Medicare primary care services in 2023, up from 0.78% in 2016, according to a study published in Health Affairs Scholar. Optum, the physician practice arm of UnitedHealth Group, controlled 2.71% of the national market by service volume, making it the largest payer-affiliated provider in primary care.
“A bothersome trend we’re seeing is the insurance companies, such as Optum, acquiring physician practices. This is producing a conflict of interest; they’re trying to undercut physician payments, but they’re also acquiring their practices,” Udaya Padakandla, MD, former president of the Texas Society of Anesthesiologists, told Becker’s in 2024. “They’re both the payers and the payees in the insurance equation. I’m not sure they have the interest of the patients or the physicians at the heart of the matter, because insurance companies are always focused on their profits.”
The American Hospital Association has also flagged the pace and structure of insurer acquisitions. The group says commercial health insurers have acquired roughly 40% more physicians than hospitals over the last five years. The AHA also contends that insurers often target more profitable specialties and that there is growing evidence some insurers “strategically structure provider acquisitions” in ways that allow them to more favorably manage medical loss ratio requirements.
Humana declined to comment. Becker’s contacted MaxHealth and Arsenal Capital Partners and will update this story if more information becomes available.
