Largest US insurer by enrollment will cover 53 million patientsDeal comes after Aetna tender $35bn for Humana And then there were three. The rapid consolidation of the US health insurance industry continued on Friday with the announcement that Anthem plans to buy rival Cigna in a deal valued at $54.2bn that will create the country’s largest health insurer by membership.
Together the two companies would cover about 53 million patients in the US,ahead of the largest insurer by revenues, UnitedHealth, or which covers 45.8 million people. The proposed transaction comes just three weeks after the third-largest insurer,Aetna, tender $34bn for Humana, and the fifth largest. Should both deals be approved by regulators and shareholders,the US’s five massive US health companies will be reduced to three even larger ones.
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Source: theguardian.com