U.S. says Amerigroup settles Medicaid case

Virginia Beach-based Amerigroup Corp. has finalized an agreement under which the company will pay $225 million to settle claims that it avoided enrolling pregnant women and sick people in Medicaid programs. The company allegedly left those groups out of Medicaid health plans it was running in Illinois, which were designed for low-income patients. The U.S. Justice Department and the Illinois government charged that Amerigroup excluded those patients because they were more expensive to treat and would hurt its profit margins.