Were ready to reconvene. Senator klobuchar is next. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. I talked a little bit about the Health Insurance consolidation and i know we had some quick answers there from both of you. We have a little more luxury of time now, so if you could, finish up, mr. Swedish. I was asking you, remember, about why you needed the merger to achieve some of these cost goals that you have. Thank you for the followup question. What id like to do is maybe describe to you the various products and services that we do offer in terms of how we segment our business. This is a highly segmented industry that then serves a very focused effort in and around the local markets. For instance, we are very active, as is cigna, in the National Marketplace serving Large National accounts. These are very sophisticated highly educated buyers of Health Care Services typically using consultants who they rely upon to make the selections for the health plan that will serve them in the National Mar
Thank you all for being here today and the excellent testimony you have offered so far. I am deeply concerned about these mergers because of the potential effect on competition and the concentration of power in fewer hands. Ive expressed those concerns publicly in some sense. I have a feeling that like the saying about marriage that this merger may be the triumph of hope over experience, the experience that is suggested by a lot of the scholarship done in this area is consolidation is so rapidly taking over this industry. We have seen it in other industries and we have seen the consequences of it in higher prices and in this case potentially higher premiums. And i am deeply troubled by the evidence that shows that neither providers nor consumers benefit from these consolidations. In other words, that the prudential aetna experience shows that premiums are not lower, consumers do not benefit, and that the savings are not passed along to consumers. When viewed together, i think both of t
Within our own 14 states, the cigna brand, the cigna products, may come into our blue cross portfolio within those 14 states. However, in the National Account space it will still continue to compete as cigna, so its a combination of kind of placements in the country that are based on our blue states and our nonblue states where cigna will, in fact, compete. With respect to the best efforts rule that you brought up, we do need to comply with that rule, and we do not need to respond to the rule in terms of how we will comply until after the transaction closes. And then well have two years thereafter to adjust our portfolio, but we do not believe that will be an impediment to the deal nor do we believe that will present any competitive deterioration in the marketplace. Whereas today cigna has every incentive its incentivized naturally to compete as much as possible and fight for as much market share as possible, but boe wont the best efforts rule necessarily limit and cap cignas future co