Priority Health, the second-largest health insurer in Michigan, announced it will acquire the state’s oldest health plan, Total Health Care. The target company was founded in 1973 as a membership-owned, not-for-profit with 96,000 members – 53,000 Medicaid HMO and 43,000 individual commercial members through two companies, Total Health Care Inc. and Total Health Care USA Inc.
The group also operates more than 2,500 healthcare centers in five counties surrounding the Detroit metropolitan area. This acquisition will give Priority a huge boost to its already 830,000 covered lives in its Medicare, Medicaid, commercial and employer group products. Priority also wanted a larger Medicaid presence in southeastern Michigan.
Michigan has witnessed a great deal of shuffling within the managed care companies in the past few years, particularly in the Medicaid and Medicare market, according to our Deal Search Online database.
In 2017, Trusted Health Plan Inc. struck a deal with Tenet Healthcare and bought Harbor Health Plan, Inc., a health maintenance organization (HMO) that provides medical, hospital and prescription drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries based in Michigan. Trusted Health rebranded Harbor Health as HP-Michigan and sold it to Health Alliance Plan last June. At the time of the sale, the company managed a 9,000-member Medicaid plan. That deal marked Health Alliance’s re-entry into Michigan’s Medicaid HMO service area known as Region 10, which includes Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties. Health Alliance currently serves 570,000 members across Michigan.
In 2018, WellCare Health Plans, Inc. (NYSE: WCG), which works exclusively with government-sponsored managed care services, bought Meridian, one of the largest privately held for-profit managed care organizations in the United States, for $2.5 billion.
The target company consists of Meridian Health Plan of Michigan, Inc., Meridian Health Plan of Illinois, Inc. and MeridianRx, a pharmacy benefit manager. Meridian serves approximately 1.1 million Medicaid, Medicare Advantage, integrated dual-eligible and Health Insurance Marketplace members as of May 1, 2018, in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.
