Healthcare companies’ fear of missing out is driving big bidding wars for one of the lowest-paid specialties.
Earlier this year, Amazon and CVS Health sparred over One Medical, with Amazon in August announcing it planned to buy the primary care operator for $3.9 billion. The same month, CVS, Amazon, UnitedHealth Group and Option Care Health fought for ownership of Signify Health, the nation’s largest health risk-assessment provider. CVS announced plans to buy Signify Health for $8 billion in September.
Now CVS is reportedly in a bidding war with Humana over Cano Health, a technology-enabled primary care practice that went public through a $4.4 billion special purpose acquisition company deal last year but has seen its stock price tumble since then. Humana was an early investor in Cano and has the right of first refusal if the company receives an acquisition offer. Humana declined to comment on the recent reports.
“We’re not opposed to larger transactions, but those types of transactions would need to be accretive, need to bring something that we don’t currently have,” said Renee Buckingham, president of Humana's primary care organization. That could include “things that would open up a new geography for us, might bring a new capability to our set of capabilities. Generally, there will be fewer opportunities for large-scale versus small M&A.”
Read this complete article on our sister publication, Modern Healthcare.
