Aetna has recorded a loss for the first quarter of the year, of $381 million, due to costs associated to its planned merger with Humana. The merger was blocked by a federal judge in January for threatening to harm competition in Medicare Advantage.

According to a Modern Healthcare report, the $37 billion merger — which cost Aetna $1 billion as a breakup fee paid to Humana — was expensive on plenty of other fronts, including millions in legal and financial fees. The deal was expected to pressure Aetna's bottom line lower, but despite all the outlay — and additional losses from the company's exchanges under the Affordable Care Act — the Q1 results still beat Wall Street's financial estimates at $737 million.

Aetna had also paid $52.5 million as a breakup fee to Medicaid managed-care insurer Molina Healthcare; Molina had agreed to purchase divested Medicare Advantage assets from Aetna and Humana to satisfy Justice Department concerns.

Complete your profile to continue reading and get FREE access to BenefitsPRO, part of your ALM digital membership.

Your access to unlimited BenefitsPRO content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.