3 tips to help tame the M&A beast

Over the past three decades, the PBM industry ‘evolved’ and today the PBM business model looks worse than the insurance industry it once set out to fix. (Photo: Shutterstock)

The business of health care is broken for consumers and taxpayers in America, and we can expect to see more mergers, acquisitions and even large alliances in the coming months and years, all forming in the name of trying to control rising costs and taking better care of patients. The question is, will they? Unfortunately, the answer usually is generally no.

While the CVS acquisition of Aetna makes financial sense for shareholders, the same can not be said for consumers. CVS and Aetna, which individually represent severe conflicts of interest, together create an even larger systemic problem. American consumers need health care intermediaries to clearly represent the interests of either the patient or provider — they can’t do both.