It may also be setting the stage for a future non-profit system of national or universal health care. If these plans keep buying each other up, there is no longer competition, because executives of the plans can regulate everything they want in one golf game. Certainly regulation in itself doesn't equal a national health system. But economics, not to speak of justice, point invariably toward a future free of the corrosive effects of a health-care system driven foremost by profits. Whatever system we as a nation eventually move to, I don't think we can call it progress unless that system is organized around a basic precept.
Health care is a human right.
A system based on private profits can never guarantee that right. They provide us with a thoughtful treasure of insight and information and a commitment toward helping create the more humane and equitable system we all deserve.