UnitedHealth Group Inc. has lost a $23.5 billion military contract that it was awarded nearly two years ago but never started administering, The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reports.
Instead, Humana Military Healthcare Services Inc. was awarded the five-year TRICARE contract to administer health benefits to U.S. soldiers and their families in the South, the paper reports Tuesday on its website.
The Humana Inc. subsidiary has administered some portion of the program since 1996, but lost its bid to retain the contract in July 2009, when Defense Department officials announced the contract would go to UnitedHealth Military & Veterans Services, a division of Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth Group.
But Humana protested that decision. The federal Government Accountability Office upheld that protest in October 2009, and the Defense Department agreed to review the bids. Humana had retained the business through one-year extensions, the most recent of which was set to expire in March 2012.
