⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

The Fifth Circuit hears Humana versus Kennedy. Under Medicare Advantage, private insurers receive government payments based partly on enrollees' diagnoses. Federal audits check those diagnoses against medical records and recover payments for unsupported diagnoses. In 2023, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, adopted a rule allowing it to extrapolate audit findings from a patient sample across an entire insurance contract. The rule also rejected a fee-for-service adjuster, an offset insurers sought for differences between the data used to set payments and the records used to audit them. Humana challenged the rule, saying CMS changed its legal justification without fair notice and an opportunity to comment. The district court set aside the rule on that procedural ground without deciding Humana's other challenges. The government now appeals. The debate over logical outgrowth asks whether the final rule was reasonably foreseeable from the proposal, and whether that test also covers the agency's reasons.

Humana v. Kennedy (No. 25-11293) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, argued October 5, 2026.