Aetna cuts all-or-nothing arrangements

The insurer will get rid of the all-products clause that was anathema to many physicians. The move is part of a company restructuring strategy.

By Cheryl Jackson, AMNews staff. Jan. 15, 2001.

It's no longer all-or-nothing for doctors contracting with Aetna.

The Hartford, Conn.-based company said it was dropping its all-products clause, which required physicians who wanted to contract with Aetna to participate in all of the company's plans.

One catch: Physicians must give Aetna 90 days notice before contract renewal that they no longer want to participate in all of its offerings. If physicians do not so inform Aetna, they still will be stuck with an all-products clause. But new contracts will not have an all-products clause.

Even so, just having the opportunity to opt out of an Aetna product line without totally severing a relationship with the company is a victory for many physicians. Other plans had offered up all-products clauses, but no one but Aetna made them a centerpiece of their corporate strategy.

"I give Aetna a great deal of credit for announcing they're not going to do something they never should have even thought of doing in the first place," said R. Paul Jennings, chief executive of The Physicians Inc., a 1,850-doctor independent practice association in Louisville, Ky., which in 1999 terminated a contract with Aetna over the all-products clause.

Many other physicians also terminated their Aetna contracts, mainly because they believed the all-products clause was a way to reimburse doctors under lower-paying HMO contracts rather than the PPO contracts physicians preferred.

Aetna, under former Chair, CEO and President Richard Huber, said the all-products clause guaranteed access to members and prevented physicians from, in Huber's words, treating only richer patients. [...]