How it started
Founding
Express Scripts began in 1986 in St. Louis County, Missouri as a result of a joint venture between a retail chain of more than 79 pharmacies (Medicare Glaser Inc.) and Sanus Corp. Health Systems.
Sanus traces its history to Bradford Systems and Administrative Services which was founded in Boston in 1968. Bradford had a contract for computer processing of Medicare and Medicaid payments. It was acquired in 1981 by McDonnell Douglas through its McDonnell Automation Company (McAuto) subsidiary for $11.5 million.
In 1983, two of McDonnell Douglas' former principals Joseph T. Lynaugh (a former director of NYC Health + Hospitals in New York City), the McAuto's project manager of the Bradford takeover, and Howard L. Waltman, a long time Bradford's employee, formed the Sanus Corporation with substantial investments and ownership from McDonnell Douglas, including a McDonnell Douglas whole ownership of the St. Louis office. General American Life Insurance Company invested in Sanus's future, the largest part of the funding based in New York. Sanus was a health maintenance organization and it merged with the General America Life Insurance preferred provider organization. Sanus rapidly grew and by 1986 it had 200,000 clients and $100 million in revenue, operating in the St. Louis, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and Washington, D.C. markets. It created a subsidiary called GenCare to fill prescriptions.
In late 1986, Sanus announced a deal with St. Louis based pharmacy Medicare-Glaser for fulfilling prescriptions. The deal was a 50-50 split ownership between Sanus and Medicare-Glaser, with the new name of Express Scripts (scripts being medical industry jargon for prescriptions). Initial plans called for Missouri and Illinois clients to get their prescriptions at the Medicare-Glaser brick and mortar pharmacies while those in other cities could get their prescriptions via mail order—an innovation at the time. The initial report of the creation said that Charles H. Ridings, formerly in charge of McDonnell Douglas mergers and acquisitions, was named the first chief executive, although he was quickly replaced by Waltman.
Sanus remained the dominant early insurance customer but Express Scripts began marketing to other providers. With increased investment by New York Life, Sansus change its name to NYL Cares and in 1998 was sold to Aetna for $1.05 billion.
From Wikipedia’s article on Express Scripts, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3