Centene Enters Agreement to Buy Behavioral Health Stalwart Magellan Health
Centene Corp. on Jan. 5 said it agreed to acquire Magellan Health, one of the largest independently held providers of behavioral health services in the U.S. Magellan is currently contracted to serve 19 payer clients (see the top three below), which enroll about 16.5 million medical lives overall, according to the latest update to AIS’s Directory of Health Plans. Centene owns the fifth-largest behavioral health organization (BHO) in the national payer landscape, Cenpatico, and is also affiliated with Managed Health Network, a BHO inherited from Centene’s 2016 acquisition of Health Net. Centene is also set to acquire Magellan’s wholly owned PBM, Magellan Rx Management. Magellan currently serves 5.5 million pharmacy lives, while Centene’s PBM subsidiary Envolve Pharmacy Solutions has 6.1 million lives as of MMIT’s third-quarter 2020 lives data update.
NOTE: As behavioral contracts may only apply to specific lines of business, medical lives described above do not necessarily represent total lives serviced by BHOs in this graphic.
*Anthem, Inc. completed its acquisition of Beacon Health Options, a BHO serving about 12 million medical lives, in March 2020. Beacon is represented as a separate entity in DHP.
SOURCE: DHP, AIS’s Directory of Health Plans, as of December 2020.
