On June 13, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed a preliminary injunction granted to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and North Dakota Attorney General (NDAG) blocking the proposed acquisition of Mid-Dakota Clinic, P.C. (MDC) – a multispecialty physician group in North Dakota – by Sanford Health, a large South Dakota-based health system (Sanford). This decision may foreclose continued pursuit of MDC by Sanford, and represents another success for the FTC in challenging health care consolidation (see our previous analysis of the granting of the injunction here, and of the FTC’s intervention here).
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Efficiencies defense
Anthem Terminates Cigna Merger Following D.C. Circuit Setback
By Conor Duffy on
On May 12, 2017, Anthem Inc. announced that it had terminated its merger agreement with Cigna Corporation, a deal that would have united the second and third largest sellers of health insurance to large companies in the country. Anthem’s termination of the merger came two weeks to the day after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected Anthem’s appeal of an injunction blocking the merger issued by a U.S. District Court earlier this year. Anthem terminated the merger one week after filing a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court that sought guidance on the viability of the “efficiencies defense” under antitrust law.
Anthem and Cigna initially entered into a merger agreement in July, 2015 that was subsequently challenged on antitrust grounds by the Department of Justice, eleven states, and the District of Columbia. The government alleged that the merger would violate Section 7 of the Clayton Act (15 U.S.C. §18) by substantially lessening competition in the insurance markets for (i) national accounts (i.e., insurance purchased by employers with 5000+ employees), and (ii) large group employers (those with 50+ employees) in various geographic areas throughout the country.
Continue Reading Anthem Terminates Cigna Merger Following D.C. Circuit Setback