State Officials’ Skepticism Stymies Elevance-BCBSLA, SCAN-CareOregon Deals

  • Feb 16, 2024

    This week, a growing chorus of criticism from state officials effectively stopped two proposed health insurer combinations in their tracks.  

    One industry observer says SCAN Group and CareOregon’s now-scuttled deal, as well as Elevance Health, Inc.’s beleaguered bid to purchase Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana, offer valuable lessons for companies hoping to combine in the future. 

    “In both cases, the organizations proposing the merger spent over a year trying to convince stakeholders that the deal was a good thing, and after multiple efforts to generate support for the decision, gave up when that support did not materialize,” Michael Abrams, managing partner of the consulting firm Numerof & Associates, tells AIS Health, a division of MMIT. 

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  • Leslie Small

    Leslie has been working in journalism since 2009 and reporting on the health care industry since 2014. She has covered the many ups and downs of the Affordable Care Act exchanges, the failed health insurer mega-mergers, and hundreds of other storylines spanning subjects such as Medicaid managed care, Medicare Advantage, employer-sponsored insurance, and prescription drug coverage. As the managing editor of Health Plan Weekly and Radar on Drug Benefits, she writes and edits for both publications while overseeing a small team of reporters who also focus on the managed care sector. Before joining AIS Health, she was a senior editor for the e-newsletter Fierce Health Payer, and she started her career as a copy editor at multiple local newspapers. She graduated with a dual degree in journalism and political science from Penn State University.

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