Health Net handbook, 2024
Where to report fraud
Members were told to write to Health Net Dental C/O LIBERTY Dental Plan, Special Investigation Unit, PO Box 26110, Santa Ana.
Who runs your plan
The name on your card is not always the company that answers the phone, builds the list of dentists you are allowed to see, or pays the bill. In Medi-Cal dental managed care those can be two different companies. Here is how to tell them apart.
Start here
Two names, one plan
California lets a licensed health plan hand off the day to day running of its benefits to another company. The licensed plan keeps the contract and stays legally responsible. The other company does the work.
The industry calls that other company the administrator, the delegate, or the Administrative Services Organization. Those three words turn up in different documents about the same arrangement. They all mean roughly the same thing: not the name on your card, but the people doing the job.
Nothing about this is hidden or unusual. It is ordinary in managed care. What is worth knowing is simply who is who, because it decides who picks up when you call.
The structure
The three roles, top to bottom
Every managed care dental plan in California has these layers. Only the top one is printed on your card, and the top two are not always the same company.
1. The licensed plan
The name on your card
Holds the Knox-Keene license from the Department of Managed Health Care and the contract with DHCS. Legally responsible for your care no matter who does the work.
2. The administrator
Whoever does the day to day work
Runs member services, processes claims, builds and credentials the dentist network, reviews treatment authorizations. A plan can do this itself or hire another company to do it. Liberty does its own. California Dental Network (DentaQuest) is part of DentaQuest, so its parent does it. Health Net hires DentaQuest. Either way, this is who you are actually speaking to when you call. When the work is hired out, the State calls the hired company an administrative services organization, or ASO.
3. You
The member
You chose a plan from the list DHCS gave you. The list does not say who administers each one.
The current picture
Who runs what today
Three plans on the menu in Sacramento and Los Angeles. Two companies actually running them. Liberty and California Dental Network (DentaQuest) have always run themselves, so Health Net is the only one where the answer has ever changed.
You choose
Health Net Dental
Day to day running
DentaQuest
Two different companies. Health Net holds the license and the DHCS contract. DentaQuest was brought in to run the plan for it.
You choose
California Dental Network (DentaQuest)
Day to day running
DentaQuest
One company, two names. California Dental Network is the licensed name on the DHCS roster. DentaQuest is the name it trades under. This is its own plan, not a plan it was hired to run.
You choose
Liberty Dental Plan
Day to day running
Liberty Dental Plan
One company, one name. Liberty holds the license and runs its own plan.
The short version
Two of the three doors lead to DentaQuest. Behind one of them it is running its own plan. Behind the other it is running a competitor's.
One company, three names, depending who is asking
The DentaQuest plan is harder to pin down than it looks, because each source names only the next step up the chain. No single public document shows you the whole thing.
The owner
Sun Life Financial Inc.
Bought DentaQuest in June 2022. Open caldental.net, the website of the plan you are actually enrolled in, and the words Sun Life do not appear anywhere on it.
The group
DentaQuest
The brand on your handbook, your provider directory and your member card. Sun Life is credited at the top of dentaquest.com, but only inside the logo. Try searching the page for the words and you will not find them, because they are part of the picture rather than part of the writing.
The licensed plan you are actually enrolled in
California Dental Network, Inc., DBA DentaQuest
Holds the license and the state contract, so this is the plan you are legally enrolled in. Its logo reads California Dental Network, A DentaQuest company, and the page beneath it says the company is part of the DentaQuest family of companies. Its member handbook opens by explaining that dental benefits are provided by California Dental Network, which does business as DentaQuest.
Each layer credits only the one directly above it. California Dental Network's logo credits DentaQuest and stops there. DentaQuest's logo credits Sun Life. The state lists the plan as California Dental Network, trading as DentaQuest, and names no owner at all.
So to find out who owns your dental plan, you would have to visit three separate websites and read the small print inside two logos. There is no one place where it is simply written down.
Checked directly on caldental.net and dentaquest.com. See the company profiles for the full ownership history.
The licensed plan barely has a website
California Dental Network (DentaQuest) holds the license, the state contract and the place on the roster. Its website is a single page, and almost everything on it points somewhere else.
California Dental is no longer offering individual dental plans. If you previously had California Dental Network individual dental plan coverage, please go to DentaQuest’s website dentaquest.com for assistance, or to file a complaint/grievance.
Medi-Cal members are treated the same way. The line on that page reading “California Dental Managed Care Medi-Cal Members, click here to access information about your dental benefits” links to dentaquest.com. So does the Covered California item in the menu, and so does the help link for former individual members.
Count what is left. The pages that stay on caldental.net are a privacy policy, a terms of use page, a grievance form, a confidential communications form, a contact page, a forms and brochures page, and a section for dentists. There is no member-facing destination on the site that is not somewhere else.
Worth noticing
The company named on your state contract sends you to the company named on your card. Both names belong to the same business, which is how it can do that without anything appearing to break.
Follow it upward
Who backs the three plans
None of the three is a standalone dental company. Each one sits under a larger insurer, a private equity firm, or both.
| Plan | Owned by | And behind that |
|---|---|---|
| Health Net Dental | Centene Corporation | Publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Its two largest disclosed shareholders are The Vanguard Group at 12.4% and BlackRock at 7.8%. |
| California Dental Network, trading as DentaQuest | Sun Life Financial Inc. | Publicly traded in Toronto and New York. Sun Life tells its shareholders that nobody owns more than 10% of it. |
| Liberty Dental Plan | Project Freedom Holdings, LLC | Majority owned by the private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe. Elevance Health, the insurer behind Anthem Blue Cross, owns 40%. |
The Liberty arrangement is worth a closer look
Liberty is the one people assume is the independent option, because it was founded by dentists and is not a household insurance name. It is not independent. Elevance Health bought into it in January 2023 and now holds 40% of its ultimate parent.
Elevance has been putting more money in since. In December 2024 it committed up to 250 million dollars in preferred shares, of which 87 million went in that year. It also holds options that could let it buy out the majority owners in 2026 and 2027, which would take it from part owner to owner.
And the relationship runs both ways. Elevance's own filing reports that Liberty ran the dental benefits for Elevance's Medicare Advantage members under a capitated arrangement worth 519 million dollars in 2024 and 426 million the year before.
The pattern
Every one of the three plans is either owned by a bigger insurer or is running dental benefits for one. DentaQuest runs Health Net's plan and its own. Liberty runs Elevance's dental business while Elevance owns 40% of Liberty. The plan names on your enrollment form are the retail end of something considerably larger.
The two names that appear on all three
Each of the three plans answers to a different parent. Two investment firms hold a stake in every one of them.
| Parent company | The Vanguard Group | BlackRock | As reported in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Centene Behind Health Net Dental |
61,190,588 shares, 12.4% | 38,215,413 shares, 7.8% | 2026 proxy statement |
| Elevance Health 40% owner of Liberty's parent |
22,890,772 shares, 10.1% | 17,694,658 shares, 7.8% | 2026 proxy statement |
| Sun Life Financial Behind DentaQuest |
25,884,084 shares, worth 1.6 billion dollars | 1,040,385 shares, worth 81.6 million dollars | Vanguard and BlackRock quarterly holdings reports |
Why the last row looks different
Centene and Elevance are American companies. Both must publish a list of anyone holding more than five percent, so their figures come straight from the companies themselves and are expressed as percentages.
Sun Life is Canadian and publishes no such list. It tells shareholders only that nobody holds more than ten percent of it. So the Sun Life figures come from the other direction: Vanguard and BlackRock each file quarterly reports with American regulators listing what they hold, and Sun Life appears on both. Those reports cover holdings managed in the United States, so the real positions may be larger.
Stated plainly
Vanguard is the largest disclosed shareholder of both Centene and Elevance Health. BlackRock is the second largest of both. Both firms also hold shares in Sun Life Financial. Every figure above is taken from a filing made by the company or by the investment firm itself.
Vanguard and BlackRock hold stakes of this kind in most large public companies, because that is what index funds do. It is true of these three, and it is true of the airline you flew on and the bank holding your deposit.
Centene and Elevance shareholdings from each company's most recent proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Sun Life holdings from Vanguard's quarterly holdings report for the period ended 31 December 2025 and BlackRock's for the period ended 30 June 2026. Liberty ownership, the funding commitment and the Medicare Advantage figures come from Elevance Health's annual report on Form 10-K. Sun Life's position is from its 2026 management information circular. Dollar figures are as reported by the filer.
How we know
DentaQuest says so itself
This is not our reading of the situation. It is a sentence in the manual DentaQuest writes for California dentists, and Health Net hosts a copy of that manual on its own website.
Additionally, DentaQuest administers the dental benefits for HealthNet Dental GMC and PHP Medi-Cal Dental plans.
One manual, two plans
The giveaway is that a single DentaQuest provider manual covers both. Its contact page lists two sets of member service numbers side by side: DentaQuest's own lines for Los Angeles and Sacramento, and directly underneath, Health Net's lines for Los Angeles and Sacramento.
Dentists treating a Health Net patient and dentists treating a DentaQuest patient are reading the same rulebook.
Where the line is drawn
The arrangement is not total, and the manual is specific about the exception. Grievances and appeals stay with Health Net.
DentaQuest is not delegated for grievances and appeals for HealthNet Medi-Cal Dental.
It said the same thing to the press a year earlier
The provider manual is not the first place DentaQuest described the arrangement. Announcing the contract award in October 2024, it told reporters the same thing in plainer words.
DentaQuest will serve a portion of this membership directly through its own plan and as the third-party administrator for another DMC plan in the program.
So if you are a Health Net member: case management, claims rules, the dentist network and the treatment criteria come from DentaQuest. If you want to complain about any of it, you go back to Health Net.
When something goes wrong
Who you complain to, and who decided
The split between the two companies is sharpest at the worst moment: when your care is refused and you want to argue about it.
DentaQuest's manual is careful here. Grievances and appeals for Health Net members are not DentaQuest's to decide. They belong to Health Net, and the manual sends members to Health Net's own department in Van Nuys, California.
That sounds like a clean line. Follow the paper trail and it gets blurrier.
Step 1. You want to complain
You call the number in your handbook
Health Net's current member handbook prints the same line at the foot of every page: call member services at 1-833-493-0428 in Sacramento, 1-844-233-4522 in Los Angeles. Those are the numbers it gives you for questions, for second opinions, and for grievances.
Step 2. Whose line is that
Health Net's, but printed in DentaQuest's manual
DentaQuest's provider manual runs one contact page for the whole program. Under California Provider & Member Services it lists its own two county numbers, then Health Net's two county numbers, labeled as Health Net's. Underneath both, with no plan label at all, sits a single General TTY/TDD Number. Health Net's handbook prints that same number, 1-800-466-7566, beside its member services line on every page.
Step 3. Where it lands
Health Net Dental, Appeals & Grievances
PO Box 10348, Van Nuys, California. This part really is Health Net's. The manual states plainly that DentaQuest is not delegated to handle it.
Read the carve-out the other way round
The manual says DentaQuest administers Health Net's dental benefits, then names exactly one function that is not DentaQuest's: grievances and appeals. It does not carve out the member services line. Answering the phone, looking up your eligibility, telling you whether a dentist is in network, taking down what you are unhappy about: none of that is on the list of things Health Net kept.
So the number on your card is Health Net's, and the operation behind it is the one Health Net hired DentaQuest to run. Health Net's own grievance staff enter after that, when a complaint reaches their department.
But the decision you are complaining about was made somewhere else
A grievance is usually about a refusal. So it is worth knowing who does the refusing. The manual describes that too, in its section on getting treatment approved.
Plans that DentaQuest administers may require review of certain procedures… DentaQuest performs the review using one of two processes, prior authorization or prepayment review.
So the sequence runs like this. DentaQuest reviews whether your treatment is covered. If the answer is no, you take that up with Health Net, using a number printed in DentaQuest's manual, and if you are deaf or hard of hearing, on a text line the two plans share.
Where the responsibility actually sits
None of this divides the accountability, whatever anyone tells you on the phone. Federal law on Medicaid managed care is direct about it, and it is worth reading once.
Notwithstanding any relationship(s) that the MCO, PIHP, PAHP, or PCCM entity may have with any subcontractor, the MCO, PIHP, PAHP, or PCCM entity maintains ultimate responsibility for adhering to and otherwise fully complying with all terms and conditions of its contract with the State.
What this means for you
If you are a Health Net member and something goes wrong, Health Net is answerable for it. That holds whether the work was done by Health Net staff or by the company Health Net brought in. A plan cannot delegate the blame along with the job.
Member service numbers from Health Net's Sacramento and Los Angeles 2025 member handbooks, cross-checked against the contact page of DentaQuest's provider manual. Grievance routing, the Van Nuys address and the prior authorization language are from that same manual. The regulation is quoted from the Code of Federal Regulations.
Health Net before 2025
It used to be Liberty running Health Net
Only one of the three plans has ever changed hands. Liberty and California Dental Network (DentaQuest) have run themselves throughout. Health Net is the one that swapped vendors, and its own handbooks used to say so plainly, in several places.
Health Net handbook, 2024
Health Net's compliance hotline
The email address printed for Health Net's Compliance Unit and Special Investigations Unit was at libertydentalplan.com.
Health Net handbook, 2022
The member advisory group
Health Net members who joined it were told they would be reviewing LIBERTY's programs and LIBERTY's financial reports.
The regulator saw it the same way
When DHCS audited Health Net's dental plan and required a corrective action plan, Health Net's written response to the state described the arrangement in its own words, repeatedly.
Health Net's delegate, Liberty Dental, revised the Quality Management…
The handover
What changed in July 2025
Compare Health Net's 2024 handbook with its 2025 one and the administrator disappears from the page.
| In the handbook | 2024 edition | 2025 edition |
|---|---|---|
| Administrator named | LIBERTY Dental Plan, in several places | None named anywhere |
| Where to send forms | C/O LIBERTY Dental Plan, Santa Ana, California | PO Box 2182, Milwaukee, Wisconsin |
| Compliance email address | Ends in libertydentalplan.com | Not printed |
| Member line, Sacramento | 1-877-550-3868 | 1-833-493-0428 |
| Member line, Los Angeles | 1-800-977-7307 | 1-844-233-4522 |
The forwarding address
The 2025 handbook does not name a new administrator. It does give members a new address to write to, and that address is not in California.
DentaQuest's California provider manual gives the same box, in the same city, under the name of its own licensed plan.
Health Net handbook, 2025
Health Net Dental
PO Box 2182
Milwaukee, WI 53201-2182
Printed for member correspondence, the Oral Health Information Form and fraud reporting. Sacramento handbook, Los Angeles handbook
DentaQuest manual, 2025
California Dental Network (DentaQuest)
PO Box 2182
Milwaukee, WI 53201-2182
The manual gives this box for DentaQuest credentialing, claims, prior authorizations and provider appeals. Provider manual
This one is not about Health Net
Why Sacramento got a way out, then lost it
Everything above concerns one plan and its vendor. This part concerns all of them. For about eighteen months, a Sacramento member in any managed care plan could walk away and go back to regular Medi-Cal Dental. The state was blunt about why.
This change is occurring because your DMC plan failed to meet contract requirements and standards regarding adequate quality of care and services, such as providing the same quality of services offered in the FFS provider network.
Sacramento had three managed care plans at the time: Access Dental Plan, Health Net and Liberty. The notice was addressed to members of all of them, and told anyone in a Sacramento managed care plan they could switch.
Alongside it, DHCS published dental visit rates comparing the delivery systems. Fee-for-service came out ahead of every managed care plan in both counties on the share of members getting an annual dental visit.
The escape hatch was always temporary, and the state said so in the same breath.
You may stay in the dental FFS delivery system until there are new DMC plans available in Sacramento County. If you choose to disenroll from any plan and join the dental FFS delivery system, you will be required to choose a new DMC plan when those plans become available.
-
1 December 2023
Sacramento members in any of the three plans then operating, Access Dental Plan, Health Net and Liberty, may leave managed care for fee-for-service, because DHCS found the plans failed to meet contract requirements and quality of care standards.
-
Through 2024
Health Net's member handbook still names LIBERTY Dental Plan throughout, as it had since at least 2021. Liberty and Access continue to run their own plans.
-
8 October 2024
Liberty announces DHCS has re-awarded its own dental managed care contract for both counties, on a term starting July 2025.
-
20 June 2025
Deadline to choose. Sacramento members who did not choose were assigned a plan. Los Angeles members who did not choose went to fee-for-service.
-
1 July 2025
The fee-for-service option closes in Sacramento. Access Dental Plan leaves the roster, California Dental Network trading as DentaQuest joins it, and DentaQuest's provider manual takes effect covering both its own plan and Health Net's.
How long this line-up is locked in
DHCS does not publish the contract end date anywhere a member would find it. Centene does, because it has to tell its shareholders. Its annual reports have carried the figure two years running.
The new 54-month contract is expected to commence in July 2025.
In January 2026, our subsidiary, Health Net Community Solutions, commenced the contract with the California Department of Health Care Services… The new contract has a 54-month term.
Put those two together and the arithmetic is simple. Fifty-four months from the original July 2025 start would have ended on 31 December 2029. Starting instead in January 2026, the same fifty-four months runs to the middle of 2030.
What it means for your options
The three plans on your enrollment form are fixed until roughly mid 2030. Barring a termination, that is the next time the State chooses who runs Medi-Cal dental in these two counties.
The limits of this one
- The 54 months is confirmed for Health Net only. All three plans were awarded together in September 2024, but neither Liberty's owners nor Sun Life has published a term, so we cannot say the other two match.
- Centene gives the month, not the day. An exact expiry date would need the executed contract, which DHCS has not published.
- Centene does not say why the start moved from July 2025 to January 2026. Its filing mentions unresolved third-party protests in its Medicaid business generally, without tying them to this contract.
The state told Sacramento members they could stay in fee-for-service until new plans arrived. The new plan that arrived, California Dental Network (DentaQuest), is run by the same company that had just taken over the running of Health Net.
In practice
What this actually changes for you
Switching between two of the three may change less than you expect
Health Net and California Dental Network (DentaQuest) are different plans with different member lines, but the claims rules, treatment criteria, case management and network credentialing behind both are run by DentaQuest.
Complaints still go to the name on your card
DentaQuest's manual states it is not delegated for Health Net grievances and appeals. Health Net members raise those with Health Net.
The extras are not the same
DentaQuest's manual states that Health Net members have no value add benefits and that Healthy Behaviors incentive programs are not currently applicable to them. Members of DentaQuest's own plan may be eligible for both.
A different plan may not mean a different dentist
Our companion site has been testing whether the specialists these directories list actually hold the credentials claimed. One Sacramento search returned seven prosthodontists that turned out to be two general dentists.
See the checkYour handbook will not tell you any of this
The current Health Net member handbook does not name DentaQuest, California Dental Network, or any administrator at all. We found the arrangement in the manual written for dentists, not the one written for members.
Being straight with you
What we still do not know
These are open questions, not accusations. If you can answer one, we would like to hear from you.
Open questions
- The exact date Liberty stopped administering Health Net's Medi-Cal dental benefits, and whether members were individually notified that their administrator had changed.
- Whether DHCS reviewed or approved the change of administrator, and what documentation exists for that.
- Why the current Health Net member handbook names no administrator when the 2024 edition named Liberty repeatedly.
- Which specific plans DHCS had in mind in the December 2023 parity finding, and whether the findings were published plan by plan.
- Whether any regulator has looked at two of three plan options in a mandatory county sharing one administrator.
- Whether Health Net members noticed any change in their dentist network after July 2025.
- Which company employs the person who answers Health Net's member services line. The contract puts the function on DentaQuest's side, but no public document names the employer of the staff on that line.
Corrections welcome. If anything here is wrong, or you hold a document that settles one of these questions, send it to us and we will update the page and say what changed.
Show your work
Sources
Every quote on this page is from a primary document. Where we describe a document rather than quote it, the document is listed here so you can check.
- Provider Office Reference Manual, California Dental Managed Care, effective 1 July 2025, published as “DentaQuest, Benefits Provided by California Dental Network”. Source for the statement that DentaQuest administers Health Net's plans, the grievances and appeals exception, the shared contact page, the Milwaukee addresses and the value add benefit differences. Health Net hosts this file on its own website; DentaQuest publishes it at dentaquest.com.
- Centene Corporation, annual reports on Form 10-K for 2024 and 2025. Source for the 54-month contract term, the expected July 2025 start and the actual January 2026 start.
- DentaQuest, announcement of its California contract award, 30 October 2024.
- The Vanguard Group, quarterly holdings report for the period ended 31 December 2025, and BlackRock, Inc., quarterly holdings report for the period ended 30 June 2026. Both list Sun Life Financial Inc., security identifier 866796105.
- 42 CFR 438.230, Subcontractual relationships and delegation. Source for the rule that a plan keeps ultimate responsibility for work it delegates.
- Health Net, Medi-Cal Dental Member Handbook and Evidence of Coverage, 2025 Benefit Year: Sacramento County edition and Los Angeles County edition, both linked from Health Net's Medi-Cal dental page. Source for the absence of any named administrator and the Milwaukee address.
- Health Net, Medi-Cal Dental Member Handbook, earlier editions: Sacramento 2022, Sacramento 2024 and Los Angeles 2024. Source for the LIBERTY Dental Plan references, the compliance email addresses and the former member service numbers.
- Health Net, 2021 corrective action plan response to the California Department of Health Care Services, alongside the 2021 Health Net dental audit report. Source for the phrase describing Liberty Dental as Health Net's delegate, and for the ASO terminology.
- Smile, California, Sacramento County Medi-Cal Dental Managed Care Plan Parity, Member Questions and Answers. Source for both state quotations about the fee-for-service option.
- DHCS, Dental Medi-Cal Managed Care Plan Transition. Source for the June 2025 deadline and the July 2025 roster change.
- DHCS, Managed Care Plan Directory. Source for current plan names and member service numbers in both counties.
- DHCS, Dental Data Reports. Source for annual dental visit rates comparing fee-for-service with the managed care plans.
- Liberty Dental Plan, contract award announcement, 8 October 2024.
- California Dental Network and DentaQuest, Sacramento member handbook and Los Angeles member handbook. Source for the corporate chain, the licensed name and trading name, and the contrast in what each handbook discloses.
Did your plan change without telling you?
If your member number changed, your dentist dropped out, or a claim was handled by a company you had never heard of, tell us what happened.