CVS Pharmacy will be separate from CVS Health, housing major insurer Aetna and benefits manager Caremark CVS Health, the largest US healthcare conglomerate valued at $117bn, has announced its plans split off its pharmacy chain from its health insurance and benefits businesses, ending an era in which healthcare companies grew into vast…
Page F134From§Eachthe morning edition — 4 November 2026
CVS keeps the insurer and the benefit manager, spins off 9,000 pharmacies; you keep the 13 percent
You will have been told this is a retreat. It is not. CVS Health spent a decade gathering the insurer, the benefit manager and nine thousand pharmacies, and on Wednesday it announced the pharmacies go out as CVS Pharmacy. Note what stays. Aetna stays. Caremark stays. The hundred and seventeen billion keeps the half that writes your premium and the half that prices your drug; the shops with the queue in them go. A divestiture is not a defeat — divestiture, mind you — it is the holder deciding the pieces are worth more apart. And the hour? KFF, on 31 October: the average premium on Healthcare.gov up thirteen percent for 2027, after twenty-six the year before. An analyst's count on 9 October: up to twelve million Americans without coverage since the start of the second term ... and nobody divests a lapsed policy. The split is the decade finishing. You keep the thirteen percent.
The rope, the boatman loosed at dusk. The far bank keeps no lantern yet.
“For ten years they told us one roof meant lower prices, and now the roof comes off — but notice which half they keep, the insurer and the middleman, the two that decide what the pill costs and what the card in your wallet costs. Meanwhile your Healthcare.gov premium goes up thirteen percent next year on top of twenty-six. Twelve million people already lost coverage, and nobody is restructuring anything on their behalf.”
“Separating the businesses unlocks value for shareholders and lets each one focus on the patient — did I say shareholders? That doesn't sound like me. Look, premium increases are a subsidy question, not a CVS question, and everybody's premiums are going up, so in a sense nobody's premiums are going up.”
The receipts
· Health insurance plan costs on Healthcare.gov to rise by double digits in 2027 from the morgue, 31 Oct 2026
· Up to 12 Million Americans Have Lost Health Coverage During Trump’s Second Term: Analysis from the morgue, 9 Oct 2026
· Poll: Democrats hold major advantage on health care costs from the morgue, 6 Oct 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.