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Iowa’s Department of Human Services says United Healthcare has signed the most Medicaid providers of the four private Managed Care Organizations that are slated to take over management of the state’s Medicaid system on Jan. 1. United Healthcare has signed almost 66 percent of the state’s nearly 30,000 Medicaid providers, Amerigroup has signed 57 percent, WellCare 50 percent, and AmeriHealth Caritas 43 percent. (Boden, 12/9)

Don Dew, a Medicaid beneficiary, received a packet in the mail informing him he had been assigned to one of the four managed care organizations (MCOs) hired by the state of Iowa to help run its Medicaid program. Dew, who has epilepsy, doesn't know if the neurologist he's been seeing in Dakota Dunes will be included in his MCOs provider network. "It could be a real possibility that instead of going seven miles up to South Dakota for a neurologist, I would actually have to go to Iowa City," he said. Siouxland patients and health care providers are grappling with the implications of Medicaid modernization just weeks before the state plans to shift management of its Medicaid program to four private, out-of-state, for-profit health care companies. (Butz, 12/10)