Aetna

Aetna Inc. (/ˈɛtnə/ ET-nə) is an American managed health care company that sells traditional and consumer directed health care insurance and related services, such as medical, pharmaceutical, dental, behavioral health, long-term care, and disability plans, primarily through employer-paid (fully or partly) insurance and benefit programs, and through Medicare. Since November 28, 2018, the company has been a subsidiary of CVS Health.

The company's network includes 22.1 million medical members, 12.7 million dental members, 13.1 million pharmacy benefit management services members, 1.2 million health-care professionals, over 690,000 primary care doctors and specialists, and over 5,700 hospitals.

Aetna is descended from Aetna (Fire) Insurance Company of Hartford, Connecticut. The name of the company is based on Mount Etna, at the time the most active volcano in Europe.

In 2000, Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, head of the nonprofit Restitution Study Group of Hoboken, New Jersey, disclosed that, from approximately 1853 to 1860 Aetna, had issued life insurance policies to slaveowners covering the lives of their slaves.

The same year, Aetna acknowledged that concrete evidence exists for Aetna issuing coverage for the lives of slaves and released a public apology.

In 2002, Farmer-Paellmann brought suit against Aetna and two other companies in federal court asking for reparations for the descendants of slaves. The lawsuit said Aetna, CSX and Fleet were "unjustly enriched" by "a system that enslaved, tortured, starved and exploited human beings." It argued that African-Americans are still suffering the effects of two and a half centuries of enslavement followed by more than a century of institutionalized racism. The complaint blamed slavery for present-day disparities between blacks and whites in income, education, literacy, health, life expectancy and crime.

This suit was dismissed, and the dismissal largely upheld on appeal.

In 2006, Farmer-Paellmann announced a nationwide boycott of Aetna over the issue of reparations for its policies covering slaves. Aetna stated that its commitment to diversity in the workplace and its investment of over $36 million in such areas as education, health, economic development, community partnerships, and minority-owned business initiatives in the African-American community are more effective at aiding descendants of slaves and African-Americans in general than making restitutions for Aetna's life insurance policies on slaves.