ESRX-MHS Part 1: Last stand of the PBM pure play: observations on the Medco-Express combination
Tory Wolff
July 29, 2011
UNH’s decision to take the commercial PBM business in-house did not force MHS into ESRX’s arms: I would argue that it removed the major roadblock to what the companies wanted to do anyway. MHS and ESRX had been talking about a merger off and on for few years (per WSJ reporting) and the logic (laid out below) is compelling but FTC concerns must have kept getting in the way. UNH’s decision doubled the size of its PBM subsidiary in terms of lives (somewhat less in terms of scripts because the