MM Curator summary
36M of the now 80M Medicaid enrollees are in one of 6 national plans. Centene alone has 14M of them.
The article below has been highlighted and summarized by our research team. It is provided here for member convenience as part of our Curator service.
Data: Company filings, CMS, Kaiser Family Foundation; Chart: Michelle McGhee/Axios
National Medicaid enrollment hit a record 80.5 million this past January, as Congress provided extra funding for states to retain and sign up more low-income adults and children during the coronavirus pandemic.
Between the lines: Because more states have outsourced their Medicaid programs to private health insurers, this pandemic-fueled growth also has been a boon for some of the largest insurance companies.
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State of play: Health insurers have been pursuing more revenue from government health programs, including Medicaid.
- Seven out of 10 Medicaid enrollees are in a plan run by an insurance company, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
- That would mean roughly 55.5 million of the 80.5 million people now on Medicaid are in a privately run plan.
- And of those 55.5 million, roughly two-thirds are in a plan owned by six dominant insurance companies.
- Centene covers 13.6 million Medicaid enrollees, the most of any company. Centene acquired WellCare last year and is now so large, it essentially functions as a branch of state and federal governments.
Worth noting: “The evidence is thin that these contractors improve patient care or save government money,” Chad Terhune reported for Kaiser Health News in 2018.
Go deeper:
Medicaid will be a coronavirus lifeline
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Clipped from: https://news.yahoo.com/health-insurers-capitalize-pandemic-fueled-090044633.html