Mic: Health Insurance Deadline 2017: What to know about marketplace plans on the last day to apply

Some antitrust experts are skeptical of whether those benefits will be passed onto consumers. Phillip Longman, policy director at the Open Market Institute and a health policy lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, said the Aetna-CVS merger could create new problems along with the ones it solves. While its scale could indeed deliver savings to consumers, Longman said, that’s only if it’s accomplished without creating a monopoly — which he fears CVS might become if it ends up pushing out other drugstore chains.

“It doesn’t make sense for all of us to make steel in our backyards,” Longman said. “Steel makes sense at scale, and health care, too, makes sense at scale. But if scale is accompanied by monopoly, the benefits don’t get shared with consumers.”

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