News Briefs: Elevance Agrees to Acquire Paragon Healthcare

Elevance Health, Inc. has agreed to acquire Paragon Healthcare, a company that provides infusion services to patients. Elevance announced the pending transaction on Jan. 4 and said it expects the deal to close in the first half of this year. The companies did not disclose financial details, but Axios reported Elevance will pay more than $1 billion for Paragon, which operates in Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. If the deal closes, Paragon will become part of CarelonRx, Elevance’s pharmacy services segment. 

The Cigna Group is in “advanced talks” to sell its Medicare Advantage business to Health Care Service Corp. (HCSC) for between $3 billion and $4 billion, according to a Jan. 3 Wall Street Journal article. The report comes shortly after Bloomberg cited anonymous sources saying HCSC and Elevance Health were interested in acquiring Cigna’s Medicare business, a segment the company entered in 2012 through its acquisition of HealthSpring. Cigna has struggled to compete in Medicare with market leaders such as UnitedHealth Group and Humana Inc., and it has just 580,000 MA lives, according to AIS’s Directory of Health Plans. Earlier last month, the WSJ reported that discussions about a potential transaction between Cigna and Humana had fizzled.