Centene officials have not confirmed a sale. But it would align with the company’s recent moves to restructure its pharmacy operations in the face of state investigations — such as seeking an outside company to begin managing its drug spending.
“Once you tell a PBM they actually have to behave, that’s when there’s no more money in it. It’s time to go,” said Antonio Ciaccia, president of drug-pricing watchdog 3 Axis Advisors, referring to businesses known asYet another ownership change in California’s drug program could bring more disruption to the state’s most vulnerable residents, some of whom are still having trouble getting their drugs and specialty medical supplies after Magellan’s rocky takeover.
“I don’t know what kind of instability that creates internally when there’s a change of this magnitude,” said Linnea Koopmans, CEO of Local Health Plans of California, which represents the state’s publicly-run Medicaid insurers that compete against Centene. “It’s just an open question.” Koopmans and other Centene critics acknowledge that California has long relied on private insurance plans to offer medical and prescription drug coverage to Medi-Cal enrollees and that the state shouldn’t be surprised by ownership changes that come with consolidation in the health care industry.
“In an ideal world, this is all backroom machinations that people don’t notice — until they do, until there is a problem,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a consumer advocacy group. “It just increases the need to make sure that that oversight is there, that accountability is there.”
Gavin Newsom was involved is what went wrong