The Cigna Group

Cigna was formed by the 1982 merger of the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company (CG) and INA Corporation (the parent corporation of Insurance Company of North America, the first stock insurance company in America). The company name, Cigna, is a mix of letters from the merging companies, CG and INA. Insurance Company of North America was formed in 1792, while CG was created in 1865 by a special act of the Governor of Connecticut. In October 1871, the great Chicago Fire burned for two days, destroyed 2,000 acres, and left 100,000 people in Illinois homeless. INA paid $650,000, one of only 51 insurance companies (out of a total of 202) to pay claims in full.

Cigna sold the majority of its life insurance operations to Lincoln National Corporation in 1997.

In October 2011, Cigna agreed to buy HealthSpring Inc. for $3.8 billion to jump-start its business selling Medicare plans from 46,000 Medicare Advantage members to almost 400,000 Medicare Advantage members. The payment would come from an issue of new equity to cover about 20 percent of the value, with the rest funded by additional cash and debt. In 2013, Cigna operated in 30 countries, had approximately 35,800 employees and managed around US$53.734 billion in assets.

In June 2015, U.S. health insurer Anthem Inc. announced that it would acquire Cigna for $47 billion in cash and stock. Anthem confirmed it had reached a deal to buy Cigna on July 24, 2015. On July 21, 2016, the US Justice Department filed an antitrust suit to block the proposed merger, and a District Court ruling on February 8, 2017, blocked the merger on anticompetitive grounds. That month, Cigna Corp. called off its $48 billion merger agreement with Anthem Inc., with Anthem stating it would "continue to enforce its rights under the merger agreement and remains committed to closing the transaction." After exhausting federal appeals of the antitrust merger block, the companies turned on each other in Delaware's Court of Chancery. The legal saga came to an end with an August 31, 2020 decision denying both companies claims for compensation from the other for the failed merger.

On March 7, 2018, it was announced that Cigna would acquire Express Scripts in a $67 billion deal and on August 24, 2018, the shareholders of Cigna and Express Scripts approved the deal.

In June 2020, Cigna formed a strategic alliance with Priority Health to make comprehensive health care coverage more affordable and accessible to Michigan employers and customers.

In September 2020, Cigna rebranded its health services portfolio under the name Evernorth, which included Express Scripts, Accredo, and eviCore.

In October 2020, it was announced that Cigna and Envision Healthcare had renewed their agreement to include Envision's clinicians as in-network providers for Cigna's members. In 2021, Molina Healthcare acquired Cigna's Medicaid contracts in Texas for US$60 million.

CGHB global health plans typically include medical, dental, behavioral, and disability coverage, as well as business travel and life insurance components. Expatriates are defined as employees of multinational companies who work outside their home country on short- or long-term international assignments. CGHB maintains its own, in-house international claims platform, and offers a network of physicians and hospitals for its members (including 550,000 in the U.S. and more than 141,000 outside the U.S.).

Controversies

Automatically rejecting claims with no review

In 2023, Cigna was criticized for allowing company doctors to reject claims even if they had not opened the patient's file. The company was found to be using a system, "PXDX," that, according to ProPublica, "saved money in two ways. It allowed Cigna to begin turning down claims that it had once paid. And it made it cheaper to turn down claims, because the company's doctors never had to open a file or conduct any in-depth review. They simply denied the claims in bulk with an electronic signature." The speed with which denials were placed was termed internally as "click and close."

Nataline Sarkisyan liver transplant case

In December 2007, Cigna refused to pay for a liver transplant of a California teenage girl, Nataline Sarkisyan, coming under scrutiny as a result. There was a liver ready and waiting to be transplanted, and doctors estimated she had a 65% chance of surviving at least six months. In response to much protest and public scrutiny, Cigna reversed its decision, though Ms. Sarkisyan died awaiting the transplant.

Even though liver transplants have been performed since 1963 and are a well-accepted treatment option for end-stage liver disease and acute liver failure, Cigna defended its actions by claiming that there was insufficient data to show that a transplant for a patient in Sarkisyan's condition would be safe and effective. The California court agreed with Cigna's position that the Sarkisyans’ claims regarding Cigna's decision-making were preempted by federal ERISA law. On April 16, 2009, the United States District Court for the Central District of California dismissed all of the claims against Cigna related to the coverage determination.

The UK newspaper The Guardian in their Esc and Ctrl videoblog about control of the Internet by corporations, documented the incident with Nataline Sarkisyan and the former vice president of Cigna talking about astroturfing, the practice of creating fake blogs by interested groups, e.g. health insurance companies, to push claims that are profitable for said company into media, e.g. dismissing universal health care.

Other controversies

In 2002, Cigna was alleged in violation of the Securities Exchange Act for earnings manipulation. Its common stock price plummeted significantly as a result.

In 2015, the American Consumer Satisfaction Index named Cigna as one of the most hated companies in the U.S. Cigna's name returned on the ACSI's most hated list in 2018.