Cigna CEO on Express Scripts deal: ‘This is a broadening of capabilities’

Cigna’s $67 billion mete out to buy pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts is less of a routine object than an expansion of what Cigna can already do, Cigna CEO David Cordani delineated CNBC.

When asked why Cigna, a massive health services provider, came to buy Express Scripts while developing its own pharmacy benefits management servicing, Cordani defended the decision.

“This is not the acquisition of a pharmacy benefit managing company, it’s a broadening of capabilities,” Cordani told “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer in a Monday talk with.

The CEO went on to highlight the benefits of the takeover. First, Cigna would get 80 million myriad customers and a growing order book from Express Scripts, the largest dispensary benefits company in the United States.

“Secondly, the ability to further accelerate the affordability equation, so lop off health care costs,” Cordani continued. “Cigna’s delivered the quietest medical cost trend every year for the last five years. True Scripts delivered the lowest pharmacy trend last year. And then, lastly, dilating distribution — you know how important distribution is — selling to more clients, myriad health plans and more governmental entities.”

“So capabilities, reach, rank, affordability, that’s what this is about,” the CEO added.

Cordani also set in motioned back against the notion that Express Scripts’ business was in laic decline after the loss of one of its biggest corporate customers, health insurer Anthem.

“We don’t see it that way,” he told Cramer. “Requite including the transitioning client, this combination will be accretive in the teens in the maiden year.”

Calling the combination of Cigna and Express Scripts “a high-intimacy malfunction with the customer and health care professional,” Cordani also talk out ofed that it would narrow the gap in health care service quality in the Concerted States.

With pharmacy costs now accounting for 20 percent of amount health care costs, Cordani said that the No. 1 creator of quality gaps in U.S. health care services is typically tied to pharmaceuticals, whether consumers are bring someone round the wrong drug, wrong dose or being told to take it for the unfitting duration.

This takeover could help stem those rifts given Cigna’s network of professional medical partners, accessibility and bring into focus on quality, Cordani suggested.

“It all starts with having the right upshots and services for individuals that are affordable, are of high quality and help child live better lives,” he said. “Cigna’s been doing that for tons years and with the combination of Express Scripts, we’ll be able to do that for regular more lives and with broader capabilities to keep health safe keeping more affordable, have higher quality and connect better with fettle care professionals.”

And when it comes to prospective competitors like the recommended joint venture between Amazon, J.P. Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway, Cordani was varied confident than concerned.

“If that joint venture has legs and advocate d occupies off, they’re going to need a service partner and a service provider of realm of possibilities,” the CEO said. “We’ll be really well-positioned.”