Obamacare has another major merger, after health care giant Aetna(AET_) buying Coventry Health Care(CVH_) $42.08 per share, in a deal that values Coventry at $5.7 billion.
The deal, which comes at a near 20% premium to Coventry’s Friday closing share price and was announced Monday, is the second major health care sector merger since President Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act was narrowly upheld by the Supreme Court in late June.
For Aetna, a large provider of commercial and individual health care plans, the deal targets Coventry’s Medicare and Medicaid customers, which are expected to grow under the expanded coverage of the Act. It also signals that healthcare giants are already planning for drastic change in the sector, even as the Act becomes a key campaign issue and presumptive Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney says he would attempt to strike it down.
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