Centene offers employee buyouts as insurance rolls shrink

Clayton-based health insurance giant Centene is offering voluntary buyouts following a dip in health insurance members and billions of dollars in losses last year.

A spokesperson for Centene declined to say how many buyouts the company was targeting, nor if they were part of a broader workforce-reduction effort.

"Centene is positioning the company to lead the future of healthcare — working to deliver a simpler and better experience for our members and partners while meeting the realities of today's healthcare environment," Centene said in a statement sent by spokesperson Sarah Tanner.

Centene employs 61,000, according to its most recent filing, and is the largest Medicaid management company in the U.S.

At the core of Centene’s business are three government health programs: Medicaid for low-income Americans, Medicare for older people, and federally subsidized Affordable Care Act insurance plans.

Across the last decade, support and expansion of those programs propelled the collective value of Centene’s publicly traded shares above $55 billion, when it traded at $96.80 a share in mid-2022.

More recently, cuts in government funding for Medicaid and ACA-plan subsidies contributed to fewer enrollees across Centene’s suite of managed care plans. The total number of members enrolled in Centene-managed ACA plans shrank by two million persons between the first quarters of Centene’s 2025 and 2026 fiscal years, a 36.3% drop from 5.63 million members to 3.58 million. Overall membership across Centene’s portfolio of plans fell by six percent.

Centene reported $1.5 billion in net earnings for the first quarter of this year.

Last year, the company reported a $6.7 billion loss, after posting profits of $3 billion the year prior.

In 2023, Centene announced plans to lay off roughly 2,000 workers, or roughly 3% of its workforce at the time.

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