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Aetna claimed this summer that it was pulling out of all but four of the 15 states where it was providing Obamacare individual insurance because of a business decision — it was simply losing too much money on the Obamacare exchanges.
Now a federal judge has ruled that that was a rank falsehood. In fact, says Judge John D. Bates, Aetna made its decision at least partially in response to a federal antitrust lawsuit blocking its proposed $37-billion merger with Humana. Aetna threatened federal officials with the pullout before the lawsuit was filed, and followed through on its threat once it was filed. Bates made the observations in the course of a ruling he issued Monday blocking the merger.
Aetna executives had moved heaven and earth to conceal their decision-making process from the court, in part by discussing the matter on the phone rather than in emails, and by shielding what did get put in writing with the cloak of attorney-client privilege, a practice Bates found came close to "malfeasance."
Source:
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-aetna-obamacare-20170123-story.html
At what point does arbitrarily screwing with the healthcare of millions of people rise to the level of criminality?
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday January 24 2017, @08:18PM
I just found the relevant passage in the ruling (p. 130). Of the three states in question (Florida, Georgia, and Missouri) that encompassed the 17 complaint counties, Florida was already profitable and expected to continue to be so. Georgia and Missouri were not profitable. The question of whether the states in question were profitable was not necessarily relevant to the ruling, only that the profitability criteria apparently were not debated in these newly added states... rather, they were just added to the list for leaving the exchanges. (Admittedly, leaving a profitable Florida entirely, rather than specific areas that were unprofitable or something, probably created more suspicion about this whole matter in the ruling.)
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday January 24 2017, @10:13PM
The pages around that did state that Aetna left the exchanges to improve it's position in the lawsuit rather than due to profitability.