{"id":40560,"date":"2016-07-21T17:11:25","date_gmt":"2016-07-21T21:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=40560"},"modified":"2016-07-21T17:11:25","modified_gmt":"2016-07-21T21:11:25","slug":"u-s-sues-to-block-2-major-healthcare-mergers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2016\/07\/u-s-sues-to-block-2-major-healthcare-mergers\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Sues to Block 2 Major Healthcare Mergers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"CNN is reporting that The Department of Justice is suing four major health insurance companies in an attempt to block two proposed mergers.<\/p>\n

The antitrust lawsuits were announced Thursday by Attorney General Loretta Lynch in response to Anthem’s $54 billion proposal to acquire Cigna and Aetna’s $37 billion takeover of Humana.<\/p>\n

If the two mergers proceed, Anthem would insure 53 million members and Aetna would cover 33 million.<\/p>\n

That would drop the number of health insurance providers from five major players to three — United Health is the other major provider.<\/p>\n

United Health care acquired Catamaran, a prescription provider and pharmacy-benefits manager, for $12.8 billion in 2015.<\/p>\n

Lynch said that if the “big five became the big three,” then Americans and their bank accounts would suffer.<\/p>\n

She also said the mergers would come at the expense of members and doctors.<\/p>\n

Assistant Attorney General William Baer said the two mergers would leave consumers at risk by reducing benefits and raising premiums.<\/p>\n

He also stressed that the most vulnerable would be hit the hardest and that competition would be reduced.<\/p>\n

“These are so-called solutions that we cannot accept,” Baer said.<\/p>\n

He added that the mergers are a “convenient shortcut to increase profit for these two companies,” and that the DOJ had “zero confidence” that they would benefit consumers.<\/p>\n

Both Anthem and Aetna said they intend to fight the suits.<\/p>\n

Anthem said the DOJ’s response was an “unfortunate and misguided step backwards for access to affordable healthcare for America.”<\/p>\n

Shares of Humana, Aetna, Anthem and Cigna fell earlier this week when rumors of the lawsuits first surfaced. But they ultimately rebounded. All four stocks are currently up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNN is reporting that The Department of Justice is suing four major health insurance companies in an attempt to block two proposed mergers. The antitrust lawsuits were announced Thursday by… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":40561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40560"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}