Cigna Bids $67 Billion to Stay in the Race

Cigna Bids $67 Billion to Stay in the Race

Cigna (NYSE: CI) is buying Express Scripts Holdings (NYSE: ESRX) for $67 billion, including debt. Some company was going to buy it, we just weren’t sure who. The deal follows the announcement of the $77 billion CVS Health/Aetna (NYSE: CVS/AET) deal and the $4.9 billion Optum/DaVita Medical Group (NYSE: UNH/DVA) hook-up in December 2017. That’s when the word “disruption” became the top-ranked meme in U.S. healthcare. We’ll grant that CVS’s move into managed care signals a change in business-as-usual. But Optum’s deal for DaVita’s medical group didn’t break new ground. Optum has long been known as a voracious acquirer of physician... Read More »

Big Names Are Buying Up Doc Groups

This has been a busy year in the physician medical group sector. Twenty-two deals have been announced through the first week in April. Four of those deals were announced, quite literally, in the first week of April. Premier Health, a health system based in Dayton, Ohio, made its fifth acquisition of a health care practice in the past six months. Upper Valley ENT, a two-physician practice in Troy, will join Premier HealthNet, the specialty physician group that is part of the health system. The group now has more than 150 physicians in southwest Ohio. Right in Premier Health’s backyard, TeamHealth Holdings (NYSE: TMH) acquired Children’s Emergency Services, which provides... Read More »

Two Deals for Renal Care Providers

Consolidation is still possible in the kidney-care sector, even though Fresenius Medical Care (NYSE: FMS) and DaVita HealthCare Partners (NYSE: DVA) appear to have about 90% of the U.S. market. Last week, DaVita announced its $415 million acquisition of Renal Ventures Management, LLC, a network of 36 dialysis clinics in six states, with headquarters in Lakewood, Colorado. RVM’s two physician divisions, Multispecialty Physician Partners and Physician Venture Partners were part of the deal. The second acquisition came from a much smaller player, privately held U.S. Renal Care, Inc. of Plano, Texas. The target was DSI Renal, owned by Frazier Healthcare and New Enterprise Associates, which... Read More »