Connecticut’s attorney general joined 11 other attorneys general and the Department of Justice recently in filing an antitrust lawsuit seeking to block a proposed merger between Anthem Inc. and Cigna Corp.
“Over the course of the past year, my staff has worked in coordination with our law enforcement partners on an investigation into the merger’s potential impact on competition, conducting numerous stakeholder interviews, joining in multiple depositions of party representatives, reviewing thousands of documents and participating in meetings with both parties,” Attorney General George Jepsen said in a statement. “Following this due diligence, it is our firm belief that, if allowed to proceed, this merger would substantially lessen competition for the provision of healthcare insurance services, in that it would have a negative impact on both the availability of competitively priced healthcare and the quality of care in the state of Connecticut.”
In the complaint, the feds and attorneys general argue that Anthem’s proposed $54 billion acquisition of Cigna would be the largest merger in the history of the health insurance industry and “would substantially lessen competition, harming millions of American consumers, as well as doctors and hospitals.”
Jepsen said in his statement that all five of Connecticut’s metropolitan markets would be among the 35 markets adversely affected by the proposed merger.
The complaint, which was filed July 21 in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., said: “Today, the industry is dominated by five large insurers commonly referred to as “the big five.” In a scramble to become even bigger, four of the big five now propose to merge: Anthem seeks to buy Cigna for $54 billion, and Aetna seeks to acquire Humana for $37 billion. These mergers would reshape the industry, eliminating two innovative competitors—Cigna and Humana—at a time when the industry is experimenting with new ways to lower healthcare costs.”
California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Tennessee and the District of Columbia, also joined the complaint.
