USA – UnitedHealth Group has acquired Change Healthcare, with the deal closing at roughly US$8 billion, Associated Press has reported.
This comes a couple of weeks after a judge rejected a challenge against it from federal regulators.
UnitedHealth is merging the technology company with its Optum segment. The healthcare giant said that combination will simplify clinical, administrative, and payment processes for care providers and billpayers.
Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group’s rapidly growing Optum business process pharmacy claims, delivers care, and provides technology support. UnitedHealth Group Inc. also runs one of the nation’s largest health insurers.
The U.S. Department of Justice had sued in February to block the deal. The DOJ argued that if the deal went through, UnitedHealth would gain access to a wealth of data on competitor health plans that it could use to gain a competitive advantage.
It also stated that the possibility of UnitedHealth misusing the data of its competitors would cause other insurers to be less innovative.
But US District Judge Carl Nichols issued an order last month denying the government’s request to scrap the deal.
However, Judge Carl Nelson ruled that the feds did not provide enough evidence to support their theory.
In his opinion, Nelson noted that executives from several competitors, including Cigna, Aetna, and Anthem, testified that UnitedHealth’s acquisition of Change would not stifle innovation.
Nichols noted in a 58-page memorandum that UnitedHealth’s incentives to protect customer data as it grows its businesses outweigh motivations to misuse the information.
Executives from UnitedHealth testified that they already have access to competitor data through Optum’s payer-agnostic services and that misusing that data would cost the company a significant amount of money.
The judge also noted that UnitedHealth has agreed to sell divest ClaimsXten, part of Change Healthcare’s business to a private-equity firm, TPG Capital that will then invest in it to alleviate other antitrust concerns.
Other hospitals’ acquisition deals
In other related news, Advocate Aurora Health and Atrium Health’s big-ticket merger bid briefly stumbled when an Illinois state regulatory board voted against the deal, and then subsequently rescinded the decision to await additional information from the health systems.
Also, Trinity Health bought out CommonSpirit Health’s 50% stake of MercyOne Health System and now holds 100% ownership of the Iowa-based regional health system.
Announced in April, the deal places Trinity in charge of 16 medical centers, 27 affiliate organizations, and more than 420 other care sites across Chicagoland.
The system recently reported in financial documents that it paid CommonSpirit US$613 million in cash for the stake.
CVS Health has won the bidding war for Signify Health, a home health and technology services company, announcing a US$8 billion (US$30.50 per share) cash deal that is expected to close in the first half of 2023.
Further to that, Walgreens finalized its majority stake investment in post-acute and home healthcare company CareCentrix.
Operated under its consumer-centric Walgreens Health segment, the deal gives Walgreens a 55% stake in the company at a US$800 million valuation with an option to raise the stake in the future.
CareCentrix will continue to operate as an independent company under current leadership.
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