3 Healthcare Stocks Paying the Highest Dividends of 2026

Could your portfolio use some more exposure to the healthcare sector as well as more income? If so, why not solve both problems with one simple solution?

Here's a rundown of three of the highest-yielding and high-quality dividend-paying stocks within the healthcare industry. In no particular order...

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Pfizer

It's been a rough past few years for Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) shareholders. After soaring during and because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the wind-down of the coronavirus contagion also undermined demand for its Comirnaty vaccine and its antiviral treatment Paxlovid. After peaking at just over $100 billion in 2022, the company has since struggled to keep its annual top line above $60 billion. Investors have simply priced in this sales decline, dragging Pfizer stock to less than half of its late-2021 peak.

The sellers arguably overshot their target, ignoring the growth that's quietly been in the works for a while now. Pfizer's got a plausible goal of introducing several new blockbuster drugs by 2030, with cancer treatments featuring prominently among these products.

The market's pricing mistake is your opportunity, of course. This prolonged pullback has not only made this stock dirt cheap but has pumped its forward-looking dividend yield up to 6.5%.

Dentsply Sirona

With a dividend yield of just over 5%, Dentsply Sirona (NASDAQ: XRAY) obviously isn't offering quite as much income production right out of the gate as Pfizer could. Where this income investment really shines, however, is on the dividend growth front. Despite not upping its annual per-share payout every year, Dentsply's dividend payment has more than doubled over the course of the past decade.

Dentsply Sirona mostly sells dentistry supplies, by the way, a business that isn't going away even if it's never going to experience massive growth.

Bristol Myers Squibb

Finally, anyone keeping tabs on the well-diversified drugmaker's stock probably already knows Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) shares haven't made any net forward progress in over a decade. They've just been choppy, with every success seemingly followed up by a major setback, like a drug failing to meet its efficacy target in clinical trials. It's been frustrating to be sure, particularly given that there's no certainty this sideways streak is poised to end anytime soon. Analysts are looking for a slight decrease in revenue this year as well as next year.

Just don't look past the bigger picture by focusing too much on the wrong details here. Bristol Myers Squibb is still reliably profitable with blockbuster drugs like blood thinner Eliquis and cancer-fighting Opdivo poised to remain cash cows for a while. This gives the company time to grow more than a couple of dozen other promising drug prospects into more meaningful franchises, while also continuing to work on the 50 compounds it's got in clinical trials right now. The company will start logging steady developmental wins soon enough.

In the meantime, the stock's forward-looking yield of just over 4% is based on a dividend that's not only been paid like clockwork for decades but has now been raised for 17 consecutive years, eclipsing Pfizer's annual dividend growth streak by one year.

James Brumley has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.