Healthy Blue Is Leaving Louisiana Medicaid: Pick a Plan by Nov. 16

Healthy Blue stops serving Louisiana Medicaid members at 11:59 p.m. on December 31, 2026. If you are one of its roughly 292,000 members, you have from October 15 to November 16, 2026 to choose one of the four remaining Healthy Louisiana plans. If you do nothing, the state picks one for you. Your Medicaid itself is not ending, and your benefits stay the same. What changes on January 1 is which company manages your care, and that decides which doctors, specialists and pharmacies you can use without a fight.

Letting the state choose is fine for some members and risky for others. This guide is about telling which one you are.

What is happening, and when

This is the second plan to leave Healthy Louisiana in 2026, and the state is handling it the same way it handled the first. UnitedHealthcare Community Plan left on March 31, 2026, and its members got a choice window followed by automatic assignment. The Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) announced Healthy Blue's exit on September 1, 2026, saying the plan is leaving at the end of its managed care contract. No new plan is joining. The four remaining plans will absorb Healthy Blue's members along with the earlier UnitedHealthcare members.

Healthy Blue keeps covering you through December 31. Care you get in November and December is still billed to Healthy Blue, so there is no reason to delay appointments or refills until the new year.

What does not change

Most of what you are worried about stays put, because the state sets it, not the plan. You do not need to reapply for Medicaid, and your eligibility is not reviewed because of this switch. The income limits are the same; if you want to confirm you still qualify, the Louisiana Medicaid income limits page has the 2026 figures by household size. Core benefits like doctor visits, hospital care, prescriptions, behavioral health and maternity care are identical across all four remaining plans.

Your regular Medicaid dental plan is also unaffected. Louisiana runs Medicaid dental separately through DentaQuest and MCNA Dental, not through your medical plan, so that card keeps working. What you lose is the extra adult dental benefit Healthy Blue added on top. Any extra dental you get in 2027 depends on which new plan you pick. Our guide to whether Medicaid covers dental explains how the base benefit works.

This exit is about Healthy Blue's Medicaid contract. If you are on Medicare and also have a Healthy Blue Medicare plan, that is a separate product. Call the number on that card to confirm what happens to it.

Should you let the state choose for you?

The state's auto-assignment is better than random, but it has a narrow view. According to LDH, it tries to keep members of the same household in the same plan and to place you with a plan that already contracts with your current providers. That works well when "your providers" means one primary care doctor. It works less well when you see six people and only one of them is hard to replace.

You can probably let it ride if you are generally healthy, see one primary care doctor (or none), fill common generic prescriptions at a chain pharmacy, and everyone in your household is already on Healthy Blue. In that case the matching is aiming at the right target, and you can still switch later (see below).

You should choose yourself if any of these apply:

• You see a specialist: a cardiologist, oncologist, psychiatrist, or anyone you waited months to get in with. Check that doctor first, because a primary care match does nothing for them.
• You are pregnant or expect to be in early 2027. Confirm your OB and the hospital where you plan to deliver are in network. LDH's published guidance does not promise you can keep an out-of-network OB through delivery.
• You are in active treatment such as chemotherapy, dialysis, physical therapy or a scheduled surgery. Approvals carry over only for a limited time (next section).
• You take a specialty or brand-name drug that needed prior approval. Each plan has its own preferred drug rules for some medications, and you want to know before January, not at the pharmacy counter.
• Your household is split: for example, a child on one plan and a parent on Healthy Blue. Decide on purpose which plan the family lands in.
• You relied on Healthy Blue's extras, like its adult dental allowance. Compare what the remaining plans offer instead.

The 60-day clock on treatments already approved

Your existing approvals do not last forever, and this is the part that most often causes trouble in a plan switch. Under LDH's transition bulletin, your new plan must honor Healthy Blue prior authorizations for up to 60 days, or until the approval's own end date, whichever comes first. During that window the new plan cannot deny the service just because your provider is out of its network. Pharmacy approvals are treated more generously and last until their stated expiration date.

The practical takeaway is that day 61 is a real deadline. If you are getting ongoing care, ask your doctor's office in December to send a continuation request to your new plan well before early March 2027. If that provider is not in your new plan's network, the 60 days are your runway to either get them added, get an exception, or move your care.

How to pick in about 20 minutes

Choosing among the four plans is mostly a network check, and you can do it in one sitting. The remaining plans are Aetna Better Health, AmeriHealth Caritas Louisiana, Humana Healthy Horizons and Louisiana Healthcare Connections.

1. List the providers you cannot easily replace. Put your specialist or OB first, then your primary care doctor, then the hospital you would go to. Add your pharmacy.
2. Look up the first name on your list in each plan's provider directory (linked from myplan.healthy.la.gov). Online directories can be out of date, so for the provider that matters most, call their office and ask, "Do you take [plan name] Healthy Louisiana in 2027?"
3. Cross off any plan that fails step 2. Most people are down to one or two plans here.
4. Break a tie on the extras. The plans compete on extra benefits like adult dental and vision allowances, rewards for checkups, rides, and maternity programs. Our Healthy Louisiana plan comparison walks through what each plan is known for. Extras change every year, so confirm the 2027 versions with the plan.
5. Enroll online at myplan.healthy.la.gov, in the Healthy Louisiana app, or by phone at 1-855-229-6848 (TTY 1-855-526-3346), weekdays 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Do it by November 16.

If you miss the window, you can still switch

Missing November 16 is not permanent, because Louisiana now lets members change plans more often than it used to. LDH's transition bulletin says members can change plans after automatic assignment through the same website or phone line. And under a rule that took effect March 1, 2026, Medicaid members can switch health plans up to two times per calendar year for any reason. Starting in 2027 that allowance follows the calendar year, so it resets on January 1.

That safety net is real, but switching in February is worse than choosing in November. A mid-year switch means another ID card, another network check, and possibly another transfer of approvals. If one of the "choose yourself" situations above applies to you, the November window is the cleanest time to do it.

Frequently asked questions

If your income has changed and you are not sure you still qualify for Medicaid at all, check that first. Our guide on how to tell whether you have Medicaid covers the quick checks. If you are over the limit, Medicaid vs. the marketplace explains where subsidized coverage picks up.