Humana Sinks on Report That Medicare Bonuses Now Harder to Get

Humana Inc. shares dropped Tuesday after reports suggested that criteria for Medicare health plans to earn bonus payments appeared to get more challenging.

Shares in the health insurer fell as much as 8.7%, the biggest intraday decline since May.

A post on LinkedIn, cited by analysts at Leerink, appeared to show changes in the thresholds for Medicare quality ratings that pay bonuses to health plans. Humana gets most of its revenue from selling private Medicare Advantage plans, and doing well on the quality ratings is crucial to its business.

The thresholds, known as “cut points,” determine how well plans need ...