Molina Healthcare fires its CEO and CFO

Citing “the company’s disappointing financial performance,” Molina Healthcare has cut ties with its CEO, J. Mario Molina, and his brother, CFO John Molina.

The Medicaid managed care company announced Tuesday that Joseph W. White, who was its chief accounting officer, will take over the role of CFO and act as the interim president and CEO while Molina seeks a replacement for that role.

Molina’s board of directors took the step of firing the sons of the company’s founder, C. David Molina, “in order to drive profitability through operational improvements,” Chairman Dale B. Wolf said in the announcement.

“With the industry in dynamic transition, the Board believes that now is the right time to bring in new leadership to capitalize on Molina’s strong franchise and the opportunities we see for sustained growth,” he added.

The leadership change comes in the wake of Molina’s revelation in February that it lost $110 million on its Affordable Care Act exchange business last year. On the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, J. Mario Molina primarily blamed the ACA’s risk adjustment program, which he said uses a methodology that “penalizes low-cost and low-premium health insurers like Molina.”

That was a sharp turnaround from back in September, when the insurer’s CEO said that it had exceeded its own growth targets for its ACA exchange business.

J. Mario Molina has also been an outspoken critic of Republicans’ bill that aims to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act—a rarity among his peers. In particular, he was critical of the steep funding cuts for Medicaid proposed by the GOP.

Molina’s now-ex-CEO earned $10 million in total compensation in 2016, a slight decrease from the $10.3 million he made the year prior and only one of two executives at the eight largest publicly traded health insurers to take a pay cut.