U.S. TO BLOCK MASSIVE INSURANCE MERGER
It is one of the economic foundations of the United States: trusts cannot be formed. A trust is defined as a conglomerate of companies that have a monopoly on a certain item or service. The Sherman Antitrust Act prevents companies from doing so. As such, the Department of Justice, headed up by Attorney General Loretta Lynch, is suing to prevent the “big five” of healthcare providers from becoming the “big three”. Currently, there is a merger on the cards between Anthem and Cigma and one between Aetna and Humana. The other healthcare provider is UnitedHealth. Should the mergers go through, there will be just three healthcare providers in the United States. Lynch argues that bank accounts would suffer in the case that this merger passes, and thus, she is suing to block it.