On July 21, 2016, the Department of Justice, Antitrust Division (the “DOJ”) announced that it, along with several state attorneys general, would sue to block two multi-billion dollar health insurance mergers between Aetna and Humana and Anthem and Cigna. According to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, those transactions would “fundamentally reshape the health insurance industry” and would “leave much of the multitrillion dollar industry in the hands of three mammoth insurance companies.” Specifically, the DOJ alleges that the insurance industry is highly concentrated, with only five major players and a number of small, limited players that could not “fill the void” left by either merger, making both transactions “presumptively unlawful.”

According to the DOJ, Anthem’s proposed $54 billion acquisition of Cigna – the largest merger in the history of the health insurance industry – would substantially lessen competition in a number of antitrust product markets, including...