Louisiana yanks a Medicaid contract, pushing 330,000 people to other plans

Louisiana has halted a contract with UnitedHealthcare to provide Medicaid coverage for roughly 333,000 people in Louisiana, less than a month before next year’s agreement was set to take effect.

People on the UnitedHealthcare plan will be redistributed to other plans, the Louisiana Department of Health said.

Medicaid Director Seth Gold said in a letter to the health plan dated Dec. 2 that the department will not renew its contract, which expires Dec. 31.

“LDH will begin the transition process of moving your Medicaid members to other contracted Medicaid Managed Care Plans for a January 1, 2026 effective date,” the letter says. “We expect United to continue to abide by all of the terms of its current contract with LDH through the expiration date. We also expect your full cooperation with transitioning your members to their new Medicaid Managed Care Plans.”

The letter did not provide a reason for the decision.

Louisiana currently contracts with six companies to provide health insurance to low-income families through the state’s Medicaid program.

The UnitedHealthcare contract is the second largest of those contracts. The plan serves 333,246 plan members as of Nov. 1, and the contract for the upcoming 2026 calendar year was projected to be worth about $4.2 billion, according to the health department.

This story was first reported by the Louisiana Illuminator.

The health department was also set to end it’s Medicaid contract with Aetna, which is owned by health giant CVS. In a nearly identical Dec. 2 letter, Gold informed the company it would not be renewing the Medicaid contract expiring at the end of the year and would transition members to other health plans.

The Aetna plan covers 157,730 people, and that one-year contract is worth about $1.9 billion, according to the health department.

But in a statement Tuesday, the health department said it now plans to renew the agreement with Aetna.

“After discussions between the State of Louisiana and Aetna Better Health of Louisiana, LDH will renew its contract with Aetna as a Medicaid Managed Care Organization (MCO) for the State of Louisiana for calendar year 2026,” says a letter from Gold dated Dec. 9 to the health plan.

The move to end the United Healthcare contract appears to have been made recently.

On November 20, Health Secretary Bruce Greenstein and other health officials appeared at a hearing before legislators, and they asked lawmakers to extend the Medicaid contracts with all six health plans, including UnitedHealthcare and Aetna. There was no mention that any of them would end.

This is a developing story.

This story has been update to include more up-to-date figures for the number of people covered by the health care plans.

© 2025 The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La.. Visit www.theadvocate.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.