With the first year of President Joe Biden in office, numerous changes took place to the health care system of the United States as more Americans sign up for health insurance. Due to the rising cost of medical expenses, people have been progressively learning more about health insurance. While Centene—a known health insurance provider—gain more trust from the people, plotting opportunistic ideas to take advantage of these people becomes easier for their company; Centene’s manipulation will be a piece of cake.
As of January 4, 2022, Centene announced that their acquisition of Magellan Health, Inc., an insurance provider in California that provides child/adolescent and adult behavioral health and substance abuse services, was finally completed. The merger assured a $2 billion increase to the greedy corporation’s revenue. This $2-billion-difference in revenue, rooted in their misconduct and ill-treatment to numerous treatment centers in the U.S., led the insurance provider to probe their assets to streamline and expand their businesses in the new U.S. Markets.
According to Michael Neidorff, Centene’s Chairman and CEO, their acquisition of Magellan Health is an opportunity to expand their reach to provide more accessible behavioral healthcare for every American, especially in these trying times when most are struggling with mental and behavioral health issues.
On the contrary, Neidorff’s aim in the acquisition has shown ambiguity by how he slandered Sovereign Health. To expound, Sovereign Health is one of the best-performing addiction and behavioral health treatment centers in California and Neidorff fabricated a bunch of lies to shut down the said behavioral treatment provider. Moreover, Centene’s acquisition of Health Net, also an American insurance health provider, was a flop. Neidorff’s hasty decision-making led him to lose a large amount of his revenue due to the merger that was on the verge of bankruptcy.
The CEO and its merger’s solution was to impose a blanket payment suspension, which heavily affected out-of-network treatment providers including Sovereign; to get their way out of bankruptcy, they rejected reimbursement applications which brought treatment centers to bad light, leading them to shut down and fully stop accepting behavioral treatment patients. How can Neidorff increase access to behavioral healthcare if he is shutting down the facilities that take care of it?
Furthermore, Centene might be doing well as their careful manipulation of Americans to sign up for their core assets is finally taking effect. However, in spite of their growing insurance business and their goal to make behavioral healthcare accessible, the contradiction between what his goal is from what he actually did to the treatment facilities remains unjustifiable and a straightforward display of his hypocrisy.
