Aetna sues Jacksonville, says city's insurance provider improperly picked

Aetna Life Insurance Co. is suing Jacksonville over the city's decision to have Florida Blue provide its health insurance, a job Aetna had been doing since 1999. In its lawsuit, filed last week, Aetna says that meetings to pick an insurance firm were not noticed in accordance with state open-meeting laws, and that the city did not follow its own procurement procedures in making the selection. The company decries the selection process as "clearly erroneous, contrary to competition, and arbitrary and capricious." Aetna didn’t get points for providing a two-year rate guarantee to the city, for example, it says, while Florida Blue only guaranteed its rates for one year.