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posted by martyb on Friday February 10 2017, @08:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the too-big-to-merge dept.

Two recent health insurance mergers have been blocked by judges:

A federal judge on Wednesday ruled against U.S. health insurer Anthem Inc's proposed $54 billion merger with smaller rival Cigna Corp, derailing an unprecedented effort to consolidate the country's health insurance industry.

The U.S. Justice Department sued in July to stop Anthem's purchase of Cigna, a deal that would have created the largest U.S. health insurer by membership, and Aetna Inc's planned $33 billion acquisition of Humana.

On Wednesday, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued the ruling against Anthem's deal, saying that the merger would have worsened an already highly concentrated market and was likely to raise prices.

Last month, a different U.S. judge ruled against Aetna's proposed deal for Humana.

Government antitrust officials argued that both deals would lead to less competition and higher prices for Americans. The acquisitions would have reduced the number of large national U.S. insurers from five to three.

Also at Bloomberg, The Hill, and WSJ.


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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday February 10 2017, @10:38PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Friday February 10 2017, @10:38PM (#465612) Journal

    Finally a judge (American judge!) has decided that competition is good, and you can't get competition when there are only 2-3 companies competing?!

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