By: Leslie Picker and Reed Abelson
NY TIMES
July 21, 2016
Within a three-week span last summer, four of the five biggest health insurers announced two mergers totaling $85 billion. Suddenly, what was five would be three, reshaping the industry.
But on Thursday, antitrust regulators said, Not so fast.
United States Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced that the government had filed lawsuits to block the deals, between Aetna andHumana and Anthem and Cigna.
The proposed mergers, she said, “would leave much of the multitrillion-dollar health insurance industry in the hands of three mammoth insurance companies.”
“If these mergers were to take place, the competition among insurers that has pushed them to provide lower premiums, higher-quality care and better benefits would be eliminated,” she said.