Des Moines Register: Iowa has assessed $1.5 million in penalties against the three companies that managed the state’s Medicaid program for failing to meet performance standards, newly released records show. More than $1 million of those penalties were assessed against AmeriHealth Caritas, which recently terminated its contract with the state because it said it was losing too much money. In fact, AmeriHealth received the five largest penalties among more than 225 infractions the state has levied against the companies it hired in 2016 to manage Iowa’s $6.4 billion Medicaid program, the records show.