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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday January 24 2017, @09:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the I'm-shocked,-shocked-I-say dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 24 2017, @09:26PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 24 2017, @09:26PM (#458273) Journal

    Good catch! And I know better, but did it unthinkingly.

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