The press release came out via CVS Health,
with no Aetna executives quoted.
CVS Health Corp. today emphasized that Aetna is part of CVS Health in
an announcement of a new Aetna health tracking program.
Aetna announced that it is setting up the Attain health tracking program,
together with Apple and Vitality Group. Aetna health plan enrollees who use the
Attain program app to track their health, and take steps to improve their
health, may get a chance to earn an Apple Watch, Aetna said.
Aetna will encourage the program enrollees, but not require the enrollees,
to share health tracking data with Aetna.
CVS Health promoted the program with a press release with a Boston
dateline. The press release had a headline starting, “Aetna Announces Attain,”
and text starting, “Aetna, a CVS Health business.”
The logo distributed with the release was the CVS Health logo.
The only Aetna or CVS Health executive quoted in the release was Dr. Alan
Lotvin, the executive vice president of transformation at CVS
Health. Lotvin has been an executive at CVS Health since 2012.
The Wellness Program
Aetna has been offering its own employees and some customers Apple Watch subsidies
since the benefit plan enrollment season for 2017.
Executives at Aetna said at the time that they believed the company
was the first large U.S. health insurer to offer a significant discount on
Apple Watch devices.
John Hancock, a Boston-based unit of Manulife Financial Corp., began
offering life insurance premium discounts for consumers who participated in the
Vitality Group wellness program in 2015, and it said in September
that it will be building the Vitality program into all new, and in-force, life
insurance policies that the company provides.
The Vitality Group is part of Discovery Ltd., the South African-based
company that helped bring the personal health account concept
to the United States.
CVS Health-Aetna
CVS Health completed its acquisition of Aetna in November.
For life and health agents, one question about the CVS Health-Aetna deal
has been how much interest CVS Health will have in Aetna’s experience and
brand.
One reason is sentimental: Aetna has been selling life insurance and health
insurance since 1853.
Another is practical: How much CVS Health sees the health insurance
business as an interesting business in its own right, as opposed to a mechanism
for bringing consumers to retail clinics in CVS Health drug stores, could shape
the kinds of commercial health insurance products the CVS Health Aetna unit
might provide going forward.
Allison
Bell, ThinkAdvisor's insurance editor, previously was LifeHealthPro's health
insurance editor. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington
University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill
School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached at
abell@alm.com or on Twitter at @Think_Allison.
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