Who Owns Molina Healthcare?

Dr. C. David Molina, an emergency room physician in Long Beach, founded the business in 1980 after watching Medicaid patients cycle through his emergency room for care they could not get elsewhere. His first clinic served low-income families in Southern California, and the operation converted to a health maintenance organization as California pushed Medi-Cal beneficiaries into managed care during the 1980s.

The Molina Healthcare brand expanded state by state, winning Medicaid contracts in Utah, Michigan, Washington, and New Mexico through the 1990s. The company reincorporated in Delaware in 2002 and went public on the NYSE in 2003. Dr. Molina died in 1996; his son J. Mario Molina ran the company as CEO with brother John Molina as CFO.

The Affordable Care Act transformed the brand. Molina entered the ACA Marketplaces in 2014 and membership surged past 4 million, but losses on exchange business and rising medical costs pushed the company to the edge. In May 2017 the board removed both Molina brothers, and Joseph Zubretsky took over months later with a turnaround program that exited unprofitable markets and restored margins.

Growth since then has run through acquisitions: Affinity Health Plan in 2020, Magellan Complete Care in 2021, Bright Health's California Medicare plans Brand New Day and Central Health Plan in 2023, and ConnectiCare in February 2025. The pattern became a signature: buy a struggling government-plan book at a discount, integrate it onto the Molina platform, and turn a marginal operation into a profitable one through medical management and scale purchasing.

By the end of 2025 the brand covered approximately 5.5 million members in 21 states, though a Medicaid cost spike cut FY2025 net income to $472 million and produced a fourth-quarter loss. The fourth quarter was hit by roughly $2.00 per share of unfavorable retroactive revenue adjustments, and the company guided 2026 as a trough year while it exits the underperforming traditional Medicare Advantage Part D product.