Texas Doctors Don’t Support Aetna-Humana Merger
The Texas Medical Association has now enlisted the help of the U.S. Department of Justice to look into a merger of health insurance companies Aetna and Humana. They say that the companies forming one giant alliance will be damaging to patients and their doctors due to reduced competition in an already narrow industry.
"We feel like this is of paramount importance in Texas," said Dr. Joseph Valenti, a Denton obstetrician-gynecologist and chairman of the council of socioeconomics for the Texas Medical Association. They are one of the strongest medical associations in the country with roughly 80% membership of doctors in the state.
Valenti wrote a letter to William Baer, U.S. assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's antitrust division, on Oct. 6, stating that Texas has mos...