Centene Corporation

Centene Corporation is a publicly managed care company based in St. Louis, Missouri. Elizabeth Brinn founded Centene as managed health service, a non-profit Medicaid plan in Wisconsin, in 1984. The company went public in December 2001 and acquired U.S. scripte (a pharmacy benefits manager in 2006. Later, Centene merged U.S. Script with subsidiaries to form its Envolve divisions, and it created Centurion, a provider of healthcare services, a joint venture with MHM services.

In 2014, Centene began offering state-run Medicaid programs through Affordable Care Act exchanges. Later in 2015, Centene announced that it would acquire Health Net, and the next year in March, it finalized the acquisition. On September 12, 2017, it announced to acquire of Fidelis Care, a non-profit insurer in New York, for the U.S. $3.75 billion, and in March 2019, it revealed plans to develop WellCare for the U.S. $17.3 billion. On January 4, 2021, it announced to acquisition Magellan Health for $2.2 billion, and it began to acquire local health services in the United Kingdom in 2017.

Centene took a 40% stake in Circle Health through its subsidiary M.H. services. In 2014, a joint venture of Centene and Community Health Centres Network L.P., Superior Health Plans of Texas, denied coverage of an infant's surgery for brain cancer at Texas Children's Hospital. Fox News article reported that Superior Health Plan had previously paid healthcare plans claims for the infant, and Superior HealthPlan stated that it did not cover procedures at the facility. After three days, Superior Health reversed its decision and paid for the surgery coverage. In 2018, an action lawsuit alleged that Ambetter marketplace healthcare plans had misled the customers with physician coverage networks that were not what it advertised. The main segments of Centene are Medicaid, ACA Health Insurance Marketplace, Medicare, Tricare, and correctional healthcare.