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Federal officials on Monday gave the go-ahead to the proposed merger between Cigna, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, and Express Scripts, a major pharmacy benefit manager. The $52 billion deal, announced last March, is one of two proposed transactions involving pharmacy companies before the Justice Department. Last December, Aetna, another giant insurer, announced its plan to join forces with CVS Health, the drugstore chain that is the main independent rival to Express Scripts, in a $69 billion deal. (Abelson, 9/17)

Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim who leads the Justice Department's antitrust division said the regulators' six-month investigation into the deal concluded it is "unlikely to result in harm to competition or consumers." In particular, the agency said the merger would not lessen competition in the sale of PBM services because Cigna's in-house PBM business is small and at least two other large PBMs and several smaller ones remain in the market. The agency also said competition from other vertically-integrated companies and PBMs and the prospect of losing customers makes it unlikely that Cigna and Express Scripts would hike prices for their rivals after merging. (Livingston, 9/17)

The new company will marry Cigna's business of managing health plans for corporations and the government with Express Scripts' role handling pharmacy benefits for those same customers. Express Scripts also owns specialty pharmacies that distribute pricey drugs. "We are pleased that the Department of Justice has cleared our transaction and that we are another step closer to completing our merger,” Cigna Chief Executive David Cordani said in a statement. (Humer, 9/17)

The two companies say they could save money if they coordinated care with prescriptions, but they have not gone into specifics about how the merger would help lower costs for patients or employers. (Weixel, 9/17)

The companies said, to date, that they had obtained clearances from departments of insurance in 16 states, and are working with regulators in the remaining jurisdictions to obtain clearances for the merger. Cigna and Express Scripts said they expect the deal will close by year-end 2018, subject to the satisfaction of all closing conditions. (Nakrosis, 9/17)

Antitrust enforcers signed off on Cigna Corp.’s $54 billion takeover of pharmacy-benefit manager Express Scripts Holding Co., clearing one of two health-care deals that stand to reshape the industry. Approval by the Justice Department smooths the way for the deal to wrap up by the end of the year, the companies said Monday in a joint statement. While some state regulators have yet to sign off, the U.S. review was one of the last major steps for the agreement the companies struck in March. (Tracer and McLaughlin, 9/17)

The Justice Department reportedly is also close to approving CVS Health’s blockbuster acquisition of Aetna, which would create one of the country’s biggest health care companies. The looming approval of the deals comes two years after Obama administration regulators blocked a major proposed consolidation in the health insurance industry over concerns about diminished competition. DOJ successfully sued in 2016 to halt Anthem’s proposed acquisition of Cigna and Aetna’s merger with Humana. (Demko, 9/17)

Imerys SA, which supplies talc to Johnson & Johnson, isn’t taking chances as another jury weighs whether to sock the health-care giant with a punishing verdict. A unit of Imerys agreed to settle its part of a California woman’s lawsuit blaming both companies for causing her cancer with asbestos-tainted talc at the conclusion of a four-week state-court trial in Pasadena, just before the case was sent to jury for deliberations. The terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed when the judge announced it Monday. In July, a St. Louis jury ordered J&J to pay $4.69 billion in damages to 22 women who blamed their ovarian cancer on exposure to asbestos in the company’s powders. (Feeley, Favot and Fisk, 9/17)