CVS to Split Pharmacy Chain from Aetna in 2028 Breakup

CVS to Split Pharmacy Chain from Aetna in 2028 Breakup

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For anyone with a prescription to fill or an insurance card in a wallet, CVS’s pharmacy and insurance businesses may soon belong to two different companies. CVS Health plans to break itself apart, keeping Hartford-based Aetna paired with its prescription drug benefits business while spinning the drugstore chain into a separate publicly traded company, with completion targeted for early 2028. Existing CVS shareholders would end up owning shares in both companies, meaning investors won’t have to choose sides — but Connecticut, where Aetna has anchored its headquarters since 1853, will have to reckon with what happens when a decade-old promise runs out.

The Financial Times first disclosed the proposed separation Tuesday, and the Wall Street Journal subsequently reported confirmation from CVS CEO David Joyner along with the anticipated early 2028 completion date, Hartford Business Journal reported. Under the plan, the entity retaining the CVS Health name would include Aetna, CVS Caremark — which manages prescription drug coverage for employers and health insurers — Oak Street Health’s primary care clinics, Signify Health’s home-visit services, and CVS’s specialty-drug operations. Joyner would lead that side. The retail business would operate as CVS Pharmacy, encompassing roughly 9,000 stores, mail-order pharmacy operations, and MinuteClinic locations.

The Pledge Clock Runs Out in Hartford

When CVS acquired Aetna for $69 billion in November 2018, it pledged to keep the insurer headquartered in Hartford for at least 10 years. That window closes in 2028 — the same year the breakup would take effect. The restructuring also arrives after years of strain at Aetna: in 2024, rising medical expenses at the insurer contributed to repeated reductions in CVS’s earnings forecast, and Brian Kane left as Aetna’s president that August after less than a year on the job. CVS began reviewing strategic options, including a possible breakup, later that year. Joyner took over as CVS CEO from Karen Lynch in October 2024, and Steve Nelson, formerly CEO of UnitedHealthcare, later became Aetna’s president.

Job cuts continued into 2026. In February, CVS informed state and city officials that it planned to cut 313 remote jobs tied to Aetna’s Hartford headquarters — 17 of those employees resided in Connecticut — and stated that layoffs over the prior two years surpassed 1,000 positions, many of them remote workers based outside the state.

In August, CVS’s insurance division, encompassing Aetna, posted $2.43 billion in second-quarter adjusted operating income, up 85.5% compared with a year earlier. That improvement is part of why Joyner says the company is positioned to proceed.

“The separation would allow executives to concentrate on the needs of each business,” Joyner told the Wall Street Journal, citing improvements in the insurance and retail operations.

The breakup would unwind a strategy built around bringing health coverage, prescription benefits, and care delivery under one owner — a vertical integration that once looked like the future of American health care. Aetna would continue sharing a parent company with Caremark and the other health services businesses, but the 9,000-store retail footprint would stand alone.

The plan also emerges while lawmakers challenge the ownership ties between pharmacies and the companies that manage prescription benefits. CVS is fighting restrictions enacted in Arkansas and Tennessee, but Joyner told the Journal those regulatory issues were not the reason for the separation.

What remains unanswered is what the split means for Hartford itself once the 10-year headquarters pledge expires in 2028 — whether Aetna’s presence in the city shrinks to a shell of its former scale, or holds. For now, the company has not said.

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