The American Hospital Association (AHA) is urging a federal appeals court to uphold a district court decision that has blocked Anthem’s proposed $54 billion acquisition of Cigna.
The organization asserted that the combined company would reduce innovation in the health-insurance market when it’s most needed to continue shifting healthcare away from the fee-for-service model toward value-based care.
“Anthem has been less willing than Cigna to innovate and develop value-based reimbursement systems,” the AHA wrote.
Anthem has said that it is “committed to completing this value-creating merger either through a successful appeal or through settlement with the new leadership at the Department of Justice.”
However, the AHA contended that value-based reimbursement models “depend critically on the willingness of payers to experiment, innovate, and collaborate with hospitals and physicians to develop new payment methodologies that go beyond the old fee-for-service system.” And there is “substantial evidence that underscores Cigna’s particular reliance {as opposed to Anthem’s} ‘upon innovation to compete,’” the AHA added.
AHA’s brief comes days after the Department of Justice, several states and the District of Columbia also urged the appeals court to maintain the lower court’s blocking of the agreement. There is “overwhelming evidence – uncontested by Anthem on appeal” that the merger would raise prices to consumers and shrink innovation among insurers, and that “showed Anthem had no real plan to achieve” the medical-cost savings it asserted that the combined company would create.
To read the AHA’s argument please hit this link.
