Anthem Sets Deadline For Cigna Acquisition

Aug. 04--The Department of Justice's timeline for antitrust trials on two insurer megamergers is a "cynical proposal," lawyers for Anthem say, and it will kill the deal.

Antitrust lawyers for the Department of Justice "enjoyed the benefit of a year-long, one-sided investigation," the lawyers said in lawsuit documents, accusing them of "already impeding Anthem's efforts to prepare for trial."

Antitrust regulators filed two lawsuits July 21 to block Anthem's purchase of Bloomfield-based Cigna for $54 billion, and Hartford-based Aetna's purchase of Humana for $37 billion, saying each deal would have a negative impact on consumers.

Lawyers for the government and from Anthem have been jousting in the last week as all the parties in the two cases prepare to have their first meeting with a judge Thursday in Washington, D.C.

Anthem is pushing for an expedited trial, one that would start in October and conclude around the end of the year. The government says that one of the trials should start Feb. 17, and the judge can decide later whether it will be Aetna-Humana or Anthem-Cigna.

Anthem said that time frame would be fatal to its deal. Even if a judge agrees with Anthem that the acquisition would be beneficial to its customers, Anthem still needs a few months to get approvals from Connecticut and several other states that have paused their own investigations while the antitrust case is pending.

"Anthem believes that the merger must close by April 30, 2017, or Cigna will declare that it is terminating the merger agreement the next day," it wrote in an argument filed Tuesday.

The government filed its counter-argument on Tuesday for a longer pretrial period.

"Anthem argues it needs a 2016 trial and decision because it is not getting along with Cigna," it said. "The contentious relationship between Anthem and Cigna is certainly relevant to whether combining these two companies will create efficiencies -- or more likely -- inefficiencies. But whether defendants are getting along (or not) should not cause the court to rush its schedule..."

Cigna has refused to say whether it would back out of the merger May 1. Its only filing on the question of scheduling said it defers to Anthem's scheduling request.

From July 2015, when it announced its intention to buy Cigna, until last month, Anthem gave 4 million documents and at least three terabytes of data to the government, and produced 22 witnesses for deposition, the company said. With so much information already available, the company questions why the government needs five months of discovery.

Government lawyers agree there's a massive amount of information and data, and suggests that Anthem, Cigna, Aetna and Humana exchange materials. Aetna rejected the suggestion, they say, and the other three haven't responded.

The two cases are linked, but will not be tried together. Anthem says they shouldn't even be linked because the government's primary arguments about Aetna-Humana are that it would hurt the Medicare Advantage market and its primary arguments about Anthem-Cigna are that it would damage employers' ability to shop for insurance.

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