News Briefs
✦ The legal dispute between Cigna Corp. and Anthem, Inc. — concerning the $1.85 billion breakup fee tied to their failed attempt to combine — is not going to be resolved as soon as anticipated. Cigna Corp. CEO David Cordani said during the company’s recent fourth-quarter earnings call that he expected a court ruling by the end of February, but a Feb. 14 Securities and Exchange Commission filing from Cigna revealed that the court issued a letter requesting that the parties in the case submit supplemental briefings. “As a result, Cigna Corporation no longer expects the court to issue its post-trial decision in this litigation before the end of February 2020,” the filing states. It did not reveal when a decision now might be expected. View the filing at https://bit.ly/2V7qLXI.
✦ While many employers are interested in taking advantage of the new federal rule that gives them more freedom to offer pretax reimbursement to employees who buy their own health coverage, uptake has been slow. Such is the conclusion of a Modern Healthcare article, which included input from third-party administrators, brokers and health insurers about health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs). Meanwhile, a new report on qualified small employer HRAs (which existed before the new regulations) found that the allowance caps set by the Internal Revenue Service for QSHRAs appear to be at a reasonable level. The report, from the software company PeopleKeep, found just 18% of single employees used up their total allowed funds in 2019 and 19% of families used their allowed funds, according to an article from Benefits Pro. Visit https://bit.ly/39G0Ha2 and https://bit.ly/2P7EXMo.