Contributer: Paula Wade
Topic: Aetna
Other than giving the folks in the Marketing Department something to do, “re-branding” is generally a fairly shallow cosmetic exercise at most businesses. But Aetna’s recent makeover of its logo attends a real transformation in the company’s business, shaped by healthcare reform and market forces and, perhaps, the uncertainty around healthcare’s future.
Gone from Aetna’s logo is the very happy-looking human figure with upstretched arms and a cheerful yellow ribbon/banner. The new logo is all lowercase, smooth, and, hearkening back to the company’s pre-2001 logos, the A and E are connected again. It leaves me wondering where that happy guy went.
Aetna is a distant third behind UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint nationally, and a perennial leader in the second tier of health plans in most markets, after the local Blue plan and United. What that means is that while the big boys can muscle top discounts from local providers, the Aetnas of the world don’t have as much rate negotiation leverage, so they’ve had to be more careful underwriters who compete on service.
That becomes a serious challenge now that healthcare reform is limiting medical loss ratios (requiring plans to spend 80-85 percent on actual healthcare and quality) and ending underwriting as the industry has known it. The result: it will be harder for second-tier plans to compete without winning superior discounts from providers. Further, healthy groups as small as 50 are moving to self-insure, hiring insurers like Aetna to do the less lucrative fee-based administration business.
Aetna’s answer is to seek out large provider groups in promising markets to develop a multi-line ACO strategy, exemplified by its ACO with Carilion Clinic in Roanoke, Va. It’s busy inking collaborative agreements all over the country that will allow Aetna to compete well as an insurer, but also as an ACO partner and wellness company.
Healthcare reform and the imperative for efficiency in healthcare delivery is changing the game for everyone, of course. Aetna has acquired IT companies (Medicity), a TPA firm (Prodigy Health Group) and a health plan administration firm (PayFlex), and is busy developing ACO-like collaborations with key providers in its major markets around the country. Aetna’s business will be divided into four segments: health insurance products and services; wellness programs and resources; financial planning for healthcare spending; and a service provider to healthcare organizations (such as ACOs).
Aetna’s new purple logo is smooth and pretty and, well, generic. It could be a logo for anything, really. And perhaps that’s the point.