Dive Brief:

• The judge tasked with overseeing two major cases challenging mergers among four of the health insurance industry's biggest players is handing off one of the cases to try and hasten things along.
• According to Employee Benefits Advisor, U.S. District Judge John Bates, in Washington, has decided to hand over the Anthem Inc. takeover of Cigna Corp. to Judge Amy Berman Jackson, also in Washington. Bates will keep the case against Aetna Inc.'s deal for Humana Inc.
• Without the move, expert say the chances for rulings on both lawsuits by year's end are minimized, and also lessens the odds that things would go south due to the complexity of two massive cases and a single judge.

Dive Insight:

"Given the complexity and importance of these cases, the court cannot feasibly try and decide both in that time frame," the judge wrote in a ruling. "Ultimately, it will be fairer to the parties and better for the public if one of the cases is randomly reassigned to another judge in this district, who can give it prompt and full attention while this judge does the same with the other."

Benefits Advisor reports that all four companies, which insure or administer a massive number of U.S. employer-paid healthcare plans, told Bates a year-end deadline is a must because of "timelines outlined in their merger agreements."

For employers, especially larger ones, the two mergers should have a serious impact on the health insurance marketplace. So far, no one has predicted how it all would affect employers' healthcare plan costs, though naturally merger proponents say the oft-mentioned economies of scale would work in favor of both employers and employees.

The Justice Department, which is seeking to block both mergers, told Benefits Advisor both cases should be ready for February trials. The DOJ has said that the mergers would "harm competition in the health insurance industry" by cutting the number of the largest insurers to just three (UnitedHealth Group, currently not in M&A mode, is the largest).