Word: mergers
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CONSUMERS AND INVESTORS OFTEN get nervous stomachs when they hear talk of synergy, that snaggle-toothed harbinger of bad mergers. So Aetna Life & Casualty Co. chairman Ronald Compton was administering verbal sedatives last week when he talked about the proposed merger between Aetna and U.S. Healthcare Inc. that will create the country's largest medical-benefits corporation. "The two companies are in fact complementary," said Compton. "They are yin and yang...
Feel better now? If the deal is approved by stockholders, as expected, the combined entity, to be known as Aetna Inc., will provide health care for 23 million people, or 1 in every 12 Americans. The $8.9 billion merger, which mirrors a recent batch of smaller consolidations in the managed-care field, is a clear signal that big medicine is here to stay, whether you like its bedside manner or not. "The main effect of the huge merger is that it will be replicated by insurers across the country," says Kenneth Abramowitz, a health-care analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein...
...real intense competition," says Jonathan Weiner, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. "In many ways, even those not enrolled in U.S. Healthcare benefited in some degree." For the company, which has been an East Coast powerhouse among health-maintenance organizations, the merger offers ready access to all 50 states...
...have criticized the many millions of dollars of profits ceos of U.S. Healthcare and other for-profit managed-health-care companies have made." Leonard Abramson, the founder of U.S. Healthcare, whom Compton hails as a "visionary genius," stands to pocket some $920 million in cash and stock from the merger--not bad for a guy who drove a cab to put himself through pharmacy school. Last week Abramson boasted, "We intend to set the standard against which all health-care companies will be measured...
...start noticing little mouse footprints soon. Along with Roseanne, two other ABC shows--Boy Meets World and Step by Step--have traveled to Disney's Orlando theme park to tape episodes this year. Producers of the shows and network officials insist that these trips were not related to the merger or to one another, pointing out that such on-location episodes usually do well in the ratings. Of course, they're not bad for company image either (Disney World has script approval of all programs shot there; among the verboten scenes are any that reveal human beings inside those Mickey...