HEALTH PLANS: The Wellpoint-Anthem merger saga goes on

Politics continues to impact healthcare as California insurance commissioner John Garimendi continues to block Wellpoint's merger with Anthem. The latest round is that Garmimendi has asked the court to throw out Wellpoint's challenge to his decision. While there's been plenty of industry tut-tutting about this, recall that the whole approach of Wellpoint/Anthem--which dangled the carrot of huge pay-offs to executives in front of a Democrat with both power over the merger and strong political ambitions--was not very smart.

I don't know if it's too late for them to sell off California Blue Cross's Life and Health subsidiary, but I'd assume that they must be working on it.