Centene, a major insurance company that has widely expanded under the Affordable Care Act, announced its intention to buy WellCare, a smaller company based in Florida, for about $15.3 Billion. This deal would mean the creation of a health care giant selling health plans under the huge government programs Medicare and Medicaid. The combined company is expected to cover 22 million people in all 50 states.
How will the WellCare-Centene merge impact members?
As of now WellCare has stated that for Medicare Advantage members nothing changes in 2019 and 2020 – there will be two separate plans on the market. A couple of months ago WellCare had also taken the responsibility of the Part D Plans of Aetna, after the CVS-Aetna merge. We are still waiting for more information about what else can this mean to Part D pricing and plan options. We should know more in September of 2019 when the 2020 plan details are made available.