WellCare Begins Its Planned Buying Spree

WellCare Health Plans CEO Ken Burdick plans to double the company’s revenue between 2017 and 2021, beginning with mergers and acquisitions. On February 22, WellCare (NYSE: WCG) made a start on those plans, announcing its acquisition of certain assets of Advicare Corporation, a managed care organization that provides Medicaid benefits in South Carolina. As of February 1, 2016, it served approximately 32,500 Medicaid members in the state. Financial terms were not disclosed. WellCare Health Plans provides managed care services for Medicare and Medicaid. As of December 31, 2015, it serves approximately 3.8 million members nationwide. The February 19 announcement by the Centers for... Read More »

Wipro Ltd. Executes on Its Growth Strategy

Acquiring, servicing and retaining customers is now a critical part of the health insurance business. That’s why global IT and business services company Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT) agreed to pay $460 million for HealthPlan Services, a portfolio company of Water Street Healthcare Partners. HealthPlan Services offers a fully integrated business-process-as- a-service (BPaaS) solution to health insurance companies in the individual, group and ancillary markets. HealthPlan Services provides U.S. payers with a diversified portfolio of health insurance products delivered through its proprietary technology platform. It connects its payer clients to more than 40 public exchanges and more than... Read More »

2015 Health Care M&A Beats All Records

It’s déjà vu all over again. 2014 was a record-breaker for health care M&A, with 1,317 transactions and spending at an astronomical $387 billion. Then 2015 came and went and, once again, we’re writing about a record-breaking number of transactions, 1,460 currently, and astronomical spending of $563 billion. Read More »
Managed Care Consolidation in Minnesota

Managed Care Consolidation in Minnesota

Even as Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) reported larger-than-expected losses in its health-exchange segment in the fourth quarter, a smaller Minnesota managed care company found relief from its own health exchange losses. PreferredOne, based in Golden Valley, was acquired by Fairview Health Services in Minneapolis for an undisclosed price. Fairview is a not-for-profit, integrated health system that has partnered with the University of Minnesota. PreferredOne serves more than 1,500 employers and 285,000 members. The company enjoyed dramatic growth in the first year that the state’s healthcare exchange, MNsure, opened, but it was forced to drop out in 2015... Read More »

Managed Care M&A in 2016

The Managed Care sector woke up in 2015 with a spate of mega deals announced in July, following the positive SCOTUS decision in King v. Burwell in late June. While Anthem (NYSE: ANTM) and Aetna (NYSE: AET) got the most press for their multi-billion bids for Cigna (NYSE: CI) and Humana (NYSE: HUM), respectively, others were making serial acquisitions. Molina Healthcare (NYSE: MOH) led the sector with eight deals in 2015. All its targets were Medicaid business carve-outs from larger entities, stretching from Washington state to Illinois, Michigan and Florida. Centene Corp. (NYSE: CNC), which also focuses on under-served and uninsured populations, made news with its $6.8 billion acquisition... Read More »

Kaiser Permanente Acquires Group Health Cooperative

Kaiser Permanente, the California healthcare provider and insurer, announced it will acquire Seattle-based Group Health Cooperative. The price of $1.8 billion will create a new community foundation in Washington state. Group Health covers approximately 590,000 members. It will become Kaiser’s eighth region, joining Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Mid-Atlantic states (Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia), Northern California, Northwest (Orgegon and southern Washington) and Southern California. If approved by regulators, Kaiser’s reach will cover the entire West Coast of the United States. Read More »