The Real Story Behind The Recent Headlines That Obamacare Is Failing

[babylonsister]

So the federal government refused to be blackmailed and Aetna withdraws their coverage. There ought to be a law...

Tara Culp-Ressler
Senior Editor at ThinkProgress.
The Real Story Behind The Recent Headlines That Obamacare Is Failing


snip//

It’s certainly true that some large insurance companies have been losing money on the marketplaces (and raising premium rates for their plans in order to compensate). And there’s broad agreement across health policy experts that there’s more work left to do to strengthen Obamacare’s marketplaces and continue attracting healthy consumers.

But according to reporting from the Huffington Post — which obtained a letter that Aetna sent to Department of Justice officials last month — that’s not exactly the whole story here. In fact, Aetna’s decision to withdraw from Obamacare was directly related to the Obama administration’s move to block a proposed merger between Aetna and Humana.

In the letter, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini writes that he’s supportive of Obamacare’s effort to expand coverage and hopes to continue providing plans on its state-level marketplaces. But he also essentially threatens to withdraw from Obamacare if the Department of Justice chooses to block the lucrative merger — saying that his company would need to abruptly reverse course, shrinking its presence rather than expanding it.

“Specifically, if the DOJ sues to enjoin the transaction, we will immediately take action to reduce our 2017 exchange footprint,” Bertolini writes.

The DOJ did sue to stop the $37 billion merger from going through, citing concerns about less competition in the insurance industry that could ultimately drive up costs for American consumers.

more...

https://thinkprogress.org/aetna-obamacare-withdraw-754dacf6065f#.tnfcpuave

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Jsut a little black mail eh!

[leftstreet]

2. Who knew corporate mergers could actually be blocked

You never hear about it

[babylonsister]

3. Here's a few that

might sound familiar and this is an old article. I did recall the airline merger being denied.


http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2011/08/31/the-governments-history-of-blocked-mergers/

The Government’s History of Blocked Mergers
By Shira Ovide
Aug 31, 2011 12:47 pm ET


The U.S. Department of Justice today sued to stop the proposed $39 billion merger of the country’s second- and fourth-biggest wireless companies, AT&T and T-Mobile USA.

The government doesn’t always get its way when it seeks to spike deals on competition grounds, and AT&T said today it will fight the government in court.

But an anecdotal look at significant mergers in which the government has intervened shows the feds do get their way quite a lot. Here is a look at the fate of other corporate mergers the government has sought to kill.

** United Airlines-US Airways, 2001

The airlines abandoned their $4.3 billion merger after the Justice Department said it would sue to block it.

** Oracle-PeopleSoft, 2004

The U.S. Department of Justice sued to block the proposed marriage of Oracle and rival business-software company PeopleSoft. The government claimed the deal would reduce competition. Oracle fought the DOJ’s decision, and won the $11 billion deal. A federal judge found the government didn’t prove its antitrust claims.

** Nasdaq-NYSE Euronext, 2011

Nasdaq and a partner lobbed a roughly $11 billion hostile takeover attempt for stock-exchange NYSE Euronext. In May, Nasdaq and the InterntercontinentalExchange dropped their takeover attempt after the DOJ indicated it wouldn’t approve a merger of the U.S.’s dominant stock exchanges.

*** EchoStar-DirecTV, 2002

The planned combination of the two largest satellite-TV companies raised red flags inside the government. The Federal Communications Commission even took the unusual step of a unanimous vote to block the merger. EchoStar tried to revise its takeover — offering to sell or lease satellite broadband capacity, for example — to overcome the government’s opposition. But in late 2002, EchoStar dropped its $18 billion deal.