Three health plans—AmeriHealth Caritas Florida, Inc., Sentara Care Alliance, LLC, and ImagineCare LLC—are challenging the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration’s managed-care contract awards, alleging an unfair procurement process favoring incumbent providers.

With billions of dollars on the line, three fights about Medicaid managed-care contracts have been sent to a state administrative law judge.

The health plans AmeriHealth Caritas Florida, Inc., Sentara Care Alliance, LLC, and ImagineCare LLC argue that they were improperly shut out of receiving contracts from the state Agency for Health Care Administration to manage care for Medicaid beneficiaries.

The plans filed protests in April after the agency announced its intention to award contracts to other managed-care organizations. The agency on Friday sent the disputes to the state Division of Administrative Hearings, where they were assigned to Judge Robert Cohen.

AmeriHealth Caritas, Sentara and ImagineCare are challenging various aspects of a year-long procurement process that led to the contract announcements. As an example, Sentara and ImagineCare — which have not had such Medicaid contracts in the past in Florida — contend in their protests that the process was tilted toward managed-care organizations that have previously been part of the system.

“AHCA’s (the Agency for Health Care Administration’s) negotiation team never intended to conduct a fair procurement where all vendors were on equal footing and subject to the same standards,” attorneys for Sentara wrote. “Instead, the negotiation team conducted negotiations in a manner that was arbitrary and capricious and created an unfair competition between incumbent vendors, who were treated more favorably by the negotiation team, and new vendors, who were disfavored due to the bias and favoritism of the negotiation team.”

Similarly, ImagineCare attorneys alleged that contract awards under what is known as an invitation to negotiate process were “based on unfair favoritism for incumbent plans.”

“As a review of the complete ITN (invitation to negotiate) record will show, ImagineCare’s reply to the ITN provided the best value to the citizens of Florida,” the ImagineCare protest said. “Yet, at every turn, the AHCA negotiators assumed — without factual basis — that ImagineCare would not be able to deliver the services as it outlined in its legally binding reply and negotiation submissions. In turn, AHCA erroneously used those baseless and manufactured assumptions to sideline ImagineCare’s reply, ignoring that it provided the best value to Florida — it was just a ‘newbie.’”

Lawmakers in 2011 created a system in which most Medicaid beneficiaries are required to enroll in managed-care plans. The agency has gone through lengthy contracting processes three times, including the process that started in 2023 and ended this spring. In the past, it awarded contracts in 11 regions of the state; that was scaled back to nine regions in the latest process.

The agency announced in April that it planned to award contracts to Florida Community Care, LLC; Humana Medical Plan, Inc.; Simply Healthcare Plans, Inc.; South Florida Community Care Network, LLC, which does business as Community Care Plan; and Sunshine State Health Plan, Inc.

On July 18, it said it also intended to award contracts to Aetna Better Health of Florida, Inc., Molina Healthcare of Florida, Inc. and UnitedHealthcare of Florida, Inc. and to revise the awards to Florida Community Care and South Florida Community Care.

Contracts are expected to take effect in 2025.

Meanwhile, ImagineCare also has filed a lawsuit in Leon County circuit court seeking to prevent the Agency for Health Care Administration from moving forward with the new contracts while legal protests continue.

As a sign of the stakes involved, health plans that were awarded contracts have intervened in the cases at the Division of Administrative Hearings and are seeking to intervene in the Leon County case.