Health insurer WellPoint Inc. announced plans last spring to sell its pharmacy benefits management business to Express Scripts Inc. for about $4.68 billion. Analysts have wondered whether other managed care companies would consider a similar sale.

QUESTION: There has been some speculation that you were having discussions about seeing what value you could get for your pharmacy benefits management unit, but you decided to retain it. Is that accurate?

ANSWER: Your conclusion is accurate. Stepping back, what we indicated earlier this year was that we were going to take a thorough and hard look at that asset. As we looked at our PBM specifically, we're able to validate that it is performing very well. It is currently critical to our integrated value proposition, so we have concluded that it is important strategically to us as we go forward. As we said in the second quarter and we reiterate today, for that asset as well as all assets, we'll continue to revisit them.