Aetna Moves Into Health IT Management With Acquisition of PayFlex Health Plan IT Platform - Subsidiary Watch

Aetna I’m sure wants to keep up with the competition in this area when you compare to the efforts of United Healthcare who owns it’s own bank with over a billion on deposit with HAS (health savings accounts) and they have options to use the money to make loans to healthcare concerns with the funds. Maybe Aetna could be on their way to some day having a bank too?

UnitedHealth Group Owns a Bank With Deposits Surpassing a Billion – OptumHealth Bank FDIC Insured

HSAs are always up for discussion as they benefit employers with the offerings and the consumer side is not always the best as far as high deductibles to be met with most plans. As always with mergers and acquisitions today in healthcare, especially the insurer end it’s kind a good idea to pay attention here as data and money are analyzed and combined beyond what has been past practice and sometimes some business models that appear might surprise you. United has long been buying up subsidiaries and you can see the daisy chain of subsidiary companies and Aetna appears to be moving in the same direction and it’s all about analytics and algorithms. Below is a statement from their privacy disclosure…interesting…business requirements is a pretty open area when you think about it as your information is subject to something along this line here I am guessing.

“Information will not be distributed or shared for marketing purposes or for any other purpose outside the scope of our business requirements.”

In the last year I can’t ever recall so many purchases by insurers with financial/health management analytics companies as what we have seen. It’s no longer separate entities with their algorithms for analytics as 3rd parties in many areas and seems to all be running together with data galore. BD

Aetna continued its spending spree with an announcement in July that it will buy the country's largest health savings account administrator, PayFlex, for $202 million.

PayFlex, based in Omaha, Neb., manages accounts for about 1 million enrollees. It also runs wellness programs and a range of account-based employee benefits, including transit reimbursement accounts, dependent care accounts, COBRA benefits and leave of absence benefits for employers.

The purchase will give Aetna a firm foothold in the HSA business. According to a survey released in June by insurer trade group America's Health Insurance Plans, 11.4 million Americans are enrolled in high-deductible health plans paired with an HSA that helps cover out-of-pocket health care costs. The plans are a popular way for employers to control costs and drive workers to pay attention to the cost of care because they must pay out of pocket for at least the first $1,000 of medical expenses.

By combining its own consumer account business with PayFlex, Aetna will hold about 2 million consumer-funded spending accounts, according to the company.