Aetna Medical Director Receives National Appointment to Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee.

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Aetna (NYSE:AET) announced today that Robert McDonough, M.D., has been appointed a member of the Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee (MCAC) for a two-year term, beginning this summer. The MCAC advises the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on whether specific medical items and services are reasonable and necessary under Medicare law. The MCAC is advisory in nature, with the final decision on all issues resting with CMS.

Dr. McDonough is medical director for Aetna's Clinical Policy Unit and is responsible for developing clinical policies for the company's medical plans which include evaluating medical literature, preparing medical technology assessments, and developing policies on the experimental and investigational status and medical necessity of items and services covered by Aetna.

"Bob's commitment to research, science and evidence-based medicine are equaled by the ethics and integrity with which he approaches the development of clear, defensible and understandable clinical policies at Aetna," said William C. Popik, M.D. Aetna's chief medical officer. "We congratulate him on the honor of serving CMS on the MCAC and we are sure CMS and its beneficiaries will benefit, as Aetna has, from his standards of excellence in evaluating medical technologies and therapies for coverage."

The MCAC is used to supplement CMS's internal expertise and to ensure an unbiased and contemporary consideration of "state of the art" technology and science. Accordingly, MCAC members are valued for their background, education, and expertise in a wide variety of scientific, clinical, and other related fields. In composing the MCAC, CMS was diligent in pursuing ethnic, gender, geographic, and other diverse views, and to carefully screen each member to determine potential conflicts of interest. All MCAC members are trained, appointed, and then perform their service as members of an MCAC panel.

Within Aetna, Dr. McDonough and his staff have developed over 600 clinical policies which define the conditions under which certain medical therapies, tests, and treatments would be considered medically necessary, and eligible for coverage under the terms of a member's individual benefit plan. Committed to transparency on these policies, in 1999 Aetna was the first national health benefits company to post and maintain its clinical policies on our web site for easy public access and review.

As one of the nation's leading providers of health care, dental, pharmacy, group life, disability and long-term care benefits, Aetna puts information and helpful resources to work for its approximately 14.4 million medical members, 12.8 million dental members, 9.0 million pharmacy members and 14.0 million group insurance members to help them make better informed decisions about their health care and protect their finances against health-related risks. Aetna provides easy access to cost-effective health care through a nationwide network of more than 672,000 health care professionals, including approximately 400,000 primary care and specialist doctors and 4,084 hospitals. For more information, please visit www.Aetna.com. (Figures as of March 31, 2005)