AHA to states: ACA provisions unlikely to temper insurance mega-merger effects

Arguments that the Affordable Care Act’s medical loss ratio and rate review standards would protect consumers in the wake of the pending mergers of Anthem with Cigna and Aetna with Humana “do not withstand scrutiny,” AHA said yesterday in a letter to two state insurance commissioners who are chairing informal working groups of their colleagues from affected states in an effort to coordinate information collection and analysis for review of the mergers. “We are deeply concerned that the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation’s recent approval of the Aetna-Humana merger with very limited remedies was premised, in part, on the Office’s acceptance of the argument that medical loss ratio requirements in Florida, and more recently in federal, law effectively limit any entities’ ability to exercise market power, independent of market concentration,” wrote Melinda Reid Hatton, AHA senior vice president and general counsel. “State regulators should be extremely skeptical of the validity of such arguments.” AHA urged the commissioners to share the association’s letter detailing why the standards do not provide adequate protections with “all your colleagues on the respective task forces you chair to inform the analyses of the task forces and the regulators in the individual states.”