美国有线新闻 CNN 美连锁药店巨头CVS收购安泰保险 或变革美国医保产业（在线收听）

What are Aetna, Cigna and Humana?

Are they all health insurance companies, pet food distributors, investment organizations or constellations?

These are the names of three health care companies in the United States.

AZUZ: And one of those insurance companies, Aetna, could soon be bought by a pharmacy company named CVS. It's offered $69 billion to take over Aetna.

If this goes through, it would be the largest health insurance deal in history, and could affect tens of millions of people.

As things stand now, 23 million have Aetna insurance, and 90 million are customers of CVS and Caremark, a mail order pharmacy that CVS owns.

There are more than 9,700 CVS pharmacies around the country and 1,100 minute clinics, where people can walk in for vaccinations, lab tests and treatments for common illnesses like strep throat.

The head of CVS says the merger would lead to lower health care expenses and better service for providers and patients who could get their health care and medications in the same place.

But consumer advocacy groups like the Coalition to Protect Patient Choice say these mergers haven't gone well in the past and that patients wind up paying more money and having less choice when it comes to medications. CVS's purchase of Aetna is not a done deal. It will first have to be approved by antitrust regulators with the U.S. government, and they've been skeptical of similar health care mergers in the past.