Aetna Survives Lawsuit It Once Agreed to Settle for $120M

Aetna Health Inc. is free from an 11-year-old lawsuit challenging the reimbursement rates the insurer used to pay medical claims.

The patients and providers leading the litigation effort dropped their case Oct. 4, three months after a federal judge declined to certify the case as a class action.

This is a huge victory for Aetna, which in 2012 agreed to settle the claims for $120 million. The insurer backed out of the deal in 2014 after the number of people opting out of the settlement exceeded an agreed-upon threshold.

The case involves Aetna’s reliance on the Ingenix database to determine ...