Senator Jeff McWaters with OP2 Talk Host Bill Crespo

In 1994, Jeff tried his hand at starting his own a health-care start-up company. He wrote a business plan at his kitchen table for what would eventually become a Fortune 500 company, AMERIGROUP CORPORATION. Jeff began AMERIGROUP in 1994 with a bold idea: he wanted to build a business focused solely on meeting the health-care needs of low-income families enrolled in publicly funded programs such as Medicaid.  By emphasizing preventive medical care that helps AMERIGROUP members stay healthier and keeps their medical costs lower, AMERIGROUP today brings health-care services to more than 1.7 million people nationwide. Fortune magazine currently lists AMERIGROUP as the 509th largest public company in America. 
Forbes magazine has praised AMERIGROUP twice as one of America's "Best Managed Companies." Jeff was named one of the 100 most influential Americans in healthcare by Modern Healthcare magazine, cited as "Virginia Entrepreneur of the Year," and inducted into the University of Kentucky School of Business Hall of Fame. He served on the Board of Directors of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and on the Publicly Listed Companies Advisory Board of the New York Stock Exchange.  He also has an honorary law degree from Regent University. The award he was the most recently honored to receive was the Hampton Roads Business Hall of Fame.
He was part of the Presidential Healthcare Transition Team in 2004, working closely to help push for prescription drugs for seniors on Medicare. AMERIGROUP has created over 4,600 jobs nationally, 1,700 of which are in Virginia Beach. Additionally, Jeff was successful in fighting to keep those same jobs here, resisting attempts to send them overseas. As a part-owner of a restaurant in Virginia Beach, he helped create over 100 more jobs.