Andrew Harris

After 18 months of courtship and court cases, two massive deals that would have reshaped the U.S. health insurance industry have both been declared dead, blocked by judges who said they’d do unacceptable harm to competition in the industry.

Aetna's attempt to assuage U.S. antitrust concerns over its $37 billion takeover of Humana by selling assets to a smaller company landed with a resounding thud.

Anthem Inc.’s proposed merger with Cigna Corp. would reduce health-care competition and raise costs for consumers, U.S. antitrust lawyers will argue Monday when the government goes to court to block the transaction.

Letters and e-mails between the two companies may become evidence in the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to halt the $48 billion.

Morgan Stanley and its board were accused of mismanaging the firm’s 401(k) retirement plan and costing its employees hundreds of millions of dollars by picking inappropriate and costly investments, some of which were managed for the firm’s own profit.

The decision on the trial’s timing comes after the DOJ tried to persuade a U.S. District judge to delay the start until January, after the companies’ self-imposed merger deadline.

The judge overseeing two U.S. cases challenging mergers among four of the biggest health insurers gave up one, improving the odds for rulings on both tie-ups by the end of the year and reducing the chance they fall apart beforehand.

The takeover is in “danger of collapsing” unless there’s a quick trial to resolve a U.S. lawsuit seeking to block the deal.

Anthem Inc. is pushing for a speedy decision on the government’s bid to block the health insurer’s planned $48 billion merger with rival Cigna Corp.

U.S. antitrust enforcers roundly rejected a pair of proposed deals that would consolidate the nation’s five biggest health insurers into three.

President Obama’s signature healthcare law was dealt another blow as a federal judge ruled a key program intended to reduce consumers’ out-of-pocket medical bills is unconstitutional because it relies on money that hasn’t been appropriated by Congress.

MetLife beat back a U.S. attempt to label it too big to fail, which would’ve put America’s biggest life insurer under tougher government scrutiny and forced it to put more money in reserves.

Illinois’s remedy for the state’s worst-in- the-nation $111 billion pension-funding shortfall was disliked by lawmakers who voted for it, the new governor who inherited it and public employee unions who sued to void it.

An eight-year-old lawsuit against aerospace giant Lockheed Martin Corp., launched by employees who claim the company's retirement plan overcharged them and critically underperformed, hit the Illinois courtroom Dec. 15.

The Notre Dame case is among 86 lawsuits attacking ACA on religious grounds, sources say, and the Supreme Court has agreed to hear challenges.

Oklahoma won court approval to proceed with a federal lawsuit challenging tax aspects of President Barack Obama’s health care law.

Two businesses, a construction firm from southwestern Illinois and an auto-parts maker in southeastern Indiana, are scheduled today to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago for an order barring enforcement.