Aetna

History

1800s

• 1819: Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, Yale graduate and attorney, becomes second president of Aetna Insurance Company, succeeding Thomas Kimberly Brace. Ellsworth, who later became the first U.S. Patent Commissioner, served as Aetna's president for two years until 1821, when he resigned, but he continued as a director for another 16 years. Ellsworth's brother, William Wolcott Ellsworth, also served as a director, as well as the company's first general counsel.

• On May 28, 1853, the Annuity department separated from Aetna Insurance to be incorporated as the Aetna Life Insurance Company, with Eliphalet Bulkeley as president.
• On November 29, 1853, J. B. Bennett was appointed general agent of the company.
• 1854 Aetna hired its first full-time employee, Thomas O. Enders, later to become company president.
• 1857 Aetna moved to new offices on Hungerford and Cone Streets in Hartford. The Panic of 1857 struck Hartford and the nation, causing the closing of all but one bank and many other businesses. Eliphalet Bulkeley blocked a move to liquidate the company during the economic downturn.
• The Aetna Insurance Company issued life insurance policies on an undetermined number of African-American slaves, naming their owners as beneficiaries.
• 1861 - Aetna began offering participating life insurance policies which paid dividends to policyholders just as the mutual life insurance policies did. Aetna introduced its new service with a promotional effort including higher commissions for its agents while most companies were cutting back due to the outbreak of the American Civil War and the consequent loss of premium payments from Southern policyholders. However, the death toll of the war coupled with the booming wartime economy caused an expansion of the life insurance business to match Aetna's expansion.
• 1865 - By 1864 Aetna had increased its volume of business by 600% over 1861 and its annual premium income ninefold, exceeding one million dollars. As a result, Aetna possessed the financial stability and resources it needed to meet the stringent regulatory requirements placed on life insurance companies in Massachusetts and New York; by 1865 the company was authorized to begin soliciting business in these states.
• 1867 - Company income rose from $78,000 in 1861 to $5.129 million by 1867. Aetna moved to its third home office at 670 Main Street, Hartford. By 1924, Aetna had $94million, 43% of its assets, invested in farm mortgages.
• 1868 Aetna altered its business practices, hiring its first actuary and abandoning the half-note premium system in favor of an all-cash premium plan.
• 1872 - Eliphalet A. Bulkeley died and Thomas O. Enders became president.
• 1878 - Aetna increased its capitalization from $150,000 to $750,000.
• 1879 - Enders' failing health forced him to resign and Eliphalet Bulkeley's son Morgan G. Bulkeley replaced him.
• 1888 - Aetna outgrew its old offices on 670 Main Street in Hartford and purchased its fourth home office, next door at 650 Main Street; the first building Aetna actually owned, and Aetna's home office for the next 42 years.
• 1891 - Aetna issued its first accident policy, purchased by Morgan Bulkeley himself.
• 1892 - Aetna held its first general agents conference in Chicago.
• 1899 - Aetna became one of the first publicly held insurance companies to enter the health insurance field.

  1900s

• 1902 - Aetna created an Accident and Liability department to offer employers' liability and workmen's collective insurance, in reaction to the growing strength of the Progressive social reform movement. This would become the cornerstone of the Aetna Accident and Liability Company.
• 1903 - An Engineering and Inspection Division was created to improve workplace safety.
• 1904 - Aetna introduced its first corporate seal, conveying Aetna's status as the largest life insurer in the world writing accident, health and liability coverage; the logo portrayed the company's home office bursting out from within a globe, with large block typeface spelling out Aetna's ranking.
• 1907 - Aetna created a casualty subsidiary to handle items such as automobile property coverage; Aetna soon began aggressively expanding into related lines such as collision and damage. This business developed into the Aetna Casualty and Surety Company.
• 1908 - Aetna hired its first home office female employee, the first of what has become more than two-thirds of Aetna's employees.
• 1910 - Under the management of E. E. Cammack, Aetna began using Hollerith punched cards machines for tabulating and hired 35 women to input mortality statistics on keypunch machines, the company's first female home office clerks.
• 1911 - Aetna began its first national advertising campaign. The same year, Aetna formed a bond department to market fidelity and surety coverages.
• 1912 - Aetna introduced the first combination automobile policy, with several separate types of coverage combined into one contract. Several Aetna insureds were killed on the RMS Titanic.
• 1913 - Aetna formed its second affiliate, the Automobile Insurance Company, to write fire insurance on cars. This soon expanded to include windstorm, tornado, leasehold, and ocean and inland marine insurance. Aetna formed a Group department to sell group life insurance, one of the first insurers to do so; the first step towards Aetna's current health care business.
• 1960 - Aetna expanded outside the U.S., buying a Canadian company, Excelsior Life Insurance Company. In 1968, it bought a majority interest in Producer's and Citizen's Cooperative Assurance Company, of Sydney, Australia. In 1981, it bought a 40% interest in two Chilean companies, and soon thereafter invested in ventures in England, Spain, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia and Korea.
• 1970 - Aetna's Pension, Casualty and Life Division under the direction of B.E. Burton, President and Lead Actuary, saw billion-dollar growth in the post-ERISA pension administration segment that placed Aetna in the top five global pension and investment asset management and recordkeeping firms in the world, with over in new sales and assets under management during the decade.
• 1996'' - Aetna sold its property and casualty subsidiary to The Travelers Companies.
• Between 1996 and 1999, Aetna initiated a series of company acquisitions. In 1996, Aetna acquired U.S. Healthcare, founded by Leonard Abramson. In 1998, Aetna bought NYLCare Health Plans for $1.05billion, adding 2.2million members. The next year, it bought Prudential HealthCare for $1billion, making it the largest provider of health benefits in the U.S., with more than 21million members. The company spent more than $20million to revamp its computer systems, enabling the company to identify and discontinue unprofitable accounts. With this new and extensive information about policyholders, new management, and a shift in strategy, Aetna sharply raised premiums on less profitable accounts. Within a few years, Aetna shed 8million covered lives due to premiums that customers could no longer afford.

  2000s

• 2000 - Aetna hired John Rowe as CEO and executive chairman. Rowe cut approximately 15,000 jobs and raised insurance premiums by 16 percent per year. In 2002, he also shrunk Aetna's customer base from 19million members to 13million by abandoning unprofitable markets, including almost half of the counties nationwide in which it offered Medicare products.
• 2000 - Aetna sold its financial services and international businesses to ING Group for $7.7billion, spun off its health business to its shareholders, thus focusing its business as an independent health and group benefits company.
• 2001 - Aetna recruited global public relations and marketing executive Roy Clason, Jr. to lead the companies reputation management strategies during Aetna's multi-year corporate turnaround campaign.
• 2006 - John Rowe ended his 65 months as CEO and executive chairman of Aetna; during his tenure, the former Harvard geriatrician earned $225,000 a day.
• 2007 - Aetna chief medical officer Troy Brennan told the Aetna Investor Conference that, "The healthcare system is not timely. " He cited "recent statistics from the Institution of Healthcare Improvement… that people are waiting an average of about 70 days to try to see a provider. And in many circumstances people initially diagnosed with cancer are waiting over a month, which is intolerable. "
• 2007 - Aetna acquired plan operator Schaller Anderson in July, signaling a push into the growing business of running plans for Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program.
• 2008 - Aetna CEO Ron Williams received $38.12million in executive compensation - the highest annual compensation in the insurance sector and the 22nd-highest compensation of all American CEOs.
• 2008 - Aetna began offering pet health insurance in Alabama, District of Columbia, Idaho, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota and Texas, with plans to quickly expand to all 50 states.
• On September 22, more than 200 people gathered in front of Aetna's Hartford headquarters to call for a public health insurance option they said is essential to true national health care reform. The insurance industry, including Aetna, has opposed a public option.
• On October 2, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and Healthcare Advocate Kevin P. Lembo asked Aetna and four other insurance companies for information the companies may have sent policyholders regarding the impact of proposed legislation on Medicare Advantage and prescription drug programs. According to Blumenthal, some insurance companies exaggerated or stretched the impact of health care reform.
• On November 3, US Senator Tom Harkin, chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, launched an investigation into health insurance pricing, asking Aetna and three other major insurers to justify their pricing practices. The investigation began after small business owners testified before Harkin's committee that skyrocketing health care premiums were severely hurting their livelihoods.
• Aetna announced the layoff off 3.5% of its work force, 625 employees, and a similar number of reductions early in 2010. The cuts included 160 jobs in Connecticut. "Streamlining our business now will enable us to improve our competitiveness and redirect resources to areas with a greater potential for future growth, " said Aetna CEO Ron Williams.
• On November 30, Aetna CEO Ron Williams told analysts that Aetna would increase prices in 2010 and force 600,000 to 650,000 Aetna customers to drop their coverage. Aetna President Mark Bertolini justified the move as "ensuring that each customer is priced to an appropriate margin. " Aetna chief executive Ronald Williams owns 7.6million Aetna stock and options.
• Aetna filed a $4.9billion correction to its 2008 health insurance regulatory filings on December 7, 2009. The new filings show that Aetna spends less on small business health care than previously reported. "Health insurance companies have a duty to provide accurate financial information both to consumers and to their regulators about how much money they actually spend on health care and how much they spend on profits, on executive salaries, and on figuring out how to deny care to people when they really need it, " said Senator Jay Rockefeller, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. "Unfortunately, it looks like Aetna and other health insurers haven't been taking this duty very seriously. I'm disappointed that my Committee had to launch a full-scale congressional investigation to get these companies to meet their basic reporting obligations. "

  2010s

2018

Lawsuits and regulatory action

1999

• A jury in California awarded $116million in punitive damages for "malice, oppression and fraud" to a patient's widow who contended he died after a subsidiary of Aetna delayed approving treatment for stomach cancer that its own doctors had recommended. Lawyers on both sides called it the largest such verdict against a health maintenance organization. In 2001 a settlement was reached.

  2000

• The U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a $1.855 million federal jury award for Brokerage Concepts Inc. against Aetna U. S. Healthcare, its Pennsylvania subsidiary, and one of its former senior executives, Richard Wolfson. In its suit, BCI accused Aetna U. S. Healthcare of tortious interference with contractual relations. BCI alleged the managed-care company used its economic power in the business of prescription drug sales to coerce one of BCI's clients, the "I Got It at Gary's" pharmacy chain, into using another Aetna U. S. Healthcare subsidiary, Corporate Health Administrators, as its health benefits management firm. According to the suit, Aetna U. S. Healthcare threatened to drop "I Got it at Gary's" from its pharmacy network if the company didn't switch to Corporate Health Administrators.

  2001

• The Maryland Insurance Commissioner ordered five Maryland health plans to pay a total of $1.4million in penalties for failing to comply with the state's claims payment practices; Aetna was cited twice and ordered to pay the largest fine of $850,000.
• The State of Texas fined Aetna $1.15million for failing to promptly pay doctors and hospitals for services. Texas Insurance Commissioner Jose Montemayor also ordered Aetna to pay restitution to physicians and health care providers who did not receive timely payment for claims.

  2002

• The New York Department of Insurance fined Aetna US Healthcare and UnitedHealthcare a total of $2.5million, citing a litany of bungled claims, improper treatment denials, unlicensed health insurance agents, and poorly performing claims processors using out-of-date software.
• Aetna agreed to streamline communications, reduce administrative complexity, and improve the quality of the health care system, ending litigation between Aetna and 700,000 physicians and medical societies. The physicians' lawsuit, settled for $470million, charged Aetna with systematically reducing payments to physicians and overriding their treatment decisions.

  2003

• Aetna and the American Dental Association announced a class-action settlement by dentists who accused Aetna of interfering with dental procedures to cut costs and forcing dentists to comply with excessive paperwork. The settlement called for Aetna to pay $4million to 40,000 to 50,000 dentists and $1million to the ADA Foundation, a charitable group.
• Georgia Insurance Commissioner John W. Oxendine fined Aetna's Prudential Health Plan $100,000 for violating Georgia's prompt pay law by delaying claims payments. Aetna companies had been fined four previous times by Oxendine's office, in 2000 and again in 2002, for a total of $411,200.

  2007

• The New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance filed an administrative order levying a $9.5million fine against Aetna for refusing to appropriately cover certain services provided by out-of-network providers—including emergency treatment—in violation of New Jersey rules and regulations.

  2009

• Former Aetna employee Cornelius Allison of Darby, Pa., filed suit against Aetna in U. S. District Court in Pennsylvania after hackers gained access to a company Web site holding personal data for 450,000 current and former employees as well as job applicants. The suit charged Aetna with negligence, breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation and invasion of privacy.
• The Arizona Department of Insurance fined Aetna Life Insurance Company and Aetna Health, Inc. after examination of their practices exposed multiple violations of Arizona insurance laws. The department found that Aetna violated significant state laws governing important areas of health insurance operations, including Aetna's: failure to provide policyholders with information about their rights on appeals of medical claims or services denials; failure to acknowledge receipt of policyholder appeals; failure to notify policyholders about appeal decisions/outcomes; and, in some appeals involving the denial of services for potentially life-threatening conditions, failure to inform policyholders of their decision within the required, expedited time frames.

  2010

• Aetna paid a $750,000 fine as part of a settlement with the New York Insurance Department related to the company administering an affordable healthcare plan for the state. Aetna's violations included failing to provide a required 30-day notice of rate increases to about 946 members in 2007, failing to provide notice to 1,406 terminated workers of their rights to convert to another policy, failing to report enrollment data from May 2007 through August 2008, and failing to respond to Insurance Department requests for data in March 2008.

  2018

• On February 11, 2018, CNN reported that the California Department of Insurance launched an investigation into Aetna following sworn testimony from Dr. Jay Ken Iinuma, a former medical director for the insurer, in a lawsuit against the insurer in which he revealed he never reviewed any patients' medical records when deciding whether to approve or deny claims for coverage. The California Insurance Commissioner, Dave Jones, issued a statement confirming the investigation the following day. On February 27, 2018, the ranking members of the Senate Committee on Finance and Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Senators Ron Wyden and Patty Murray, issued a letter to Aetna demanding further information regarding Dr. Iinuma's testimony and the insurer's medical claims determination and patient appeal processes. In 2019, Aetna settled the lawsuit, and California investigation remained ongoing.
• In 2018, a state jury in Oklahoma found against Aetna for $26.5 million in Ron Cunningham v. Aetna, with much of the damages arising from insurance bad faith; the company stated that it was considering an appeal.

  Life insurance policies on slaves

Lobbying and campaign contributions

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