Reference-based pricing: where do carriers go from here?

Back in 2015, the big topic in health care was insurance company consolidation. This was the year Anthem announced plans to acquire Cigna, and Aetna put out a bid for Humana.

Mergers across four of the country’s biggest insurers would have significantly reshaped the U.S. insurance landscape, and not everyone thought it was a good idea. There were concerns that consolidation would lead to rising costs for consumers. In fact, CEO of electronic medical record company athenahealth, Jonathan Bush, had this to say to CNBC about the potential deals:

“These [mergers] are what happen when industries essentially die. Hopefully what will happen is there will be disruptive innovation and the role of the traditional health insurance company will be obsolete.”