On Monday, Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) reported its fourth quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call. Take a look.

Medicare Advantage

Joshua Raskin – Barclays Capital asked: Taking a step back on the Medicare Advantage landscape, we’ve seen some pretty strong growth recently. We’re up to almost 13.5 million lives now.

Historically, you’ve talked about competing with the government, the fee-for-service market and this 15 Percent Solution. Are we getting to the point where competitors are starting to matter? Are there specific markets, besides South Florida, that are popping up/becoming a little bit more difficult from a competitive standpoint?

Michael B. McCallister – Chairman and CEO responded: Not really. Our key to success has been to go nationwide as fast as we could over the last five years. There’s really only a couple of companies that have that kind of a footprint.

One thing that helps us in particular is we are in a lot of places where there’s not a lot of competition because they don’t have the capacity to go there. We talked about it for a long time.

We started doing networking in Medicare in 2005 preparing for where we are today. There are spots where they’re more competitive than others.You mentioned South Florida; we have dozens of competitors now there, but we continue to grow there and do quite well.

At some point your question will be very appropriate because there is going to be share taken from each other at some point as we all get bigger and bigger. Right now the opportunity to grow is very significant without having to worry about taking somebody else’s customer.

Medicare Enrollment Guidance

Get Your FREE Special Report: 4 Things You Must Know About the US Economy Now!