Additional Public Hearings Scheduled For Sierra Health/UnitedHealth Merger

The Nevada DOI has announced that it will hold additional public hearings in its review of the Sierra Health Services Inc. (SIE) - UnitedHealth Group, Inc. (UNH) merger. Hearing dates have not been scheduled as of this entry.

The hearings are a direct result of Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons formally requesting the hearings during the initial public hearing held last month. As noted previously, the Governor does not oppose the merger and appears to be using the case as a form of public outreach, rather than any legitimate concern for the merger. In fact, the Governor has been quoted with the following with respect to the DOI review process

In the end, this merger may work to the benefit of Nevadans, but at this point we still need more information. This could be the largest health care event in Nevada history.

This is not the sort of rhetoric that foreshadows serious problems for the transaction over the coming weeks. Indeed, it seems more as if the Nevada political environment is more favorable to this merger than was expected previously. Thus, there continues to be no expectation of major delays from the key state of Nevada, and DOI (as well as DOJ) approval remains expected before the end of September 2007.

Once scheduled, the hearing dates will be posted to this DOI website.

Disclosure: We have no positions of any kind, in any security. We are a completely neutral source of research and analysis.