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Aetna Inc. said it has reached a deal to buy a privately held provider of technology that helps people shop on health-insurance exchanges, which have grown in prominence under the federal Affordable Care Act. Aetna said the deal for the company, bswift, carries a price tag of about $400 million, and is expected to close before the end of this year. (Calia, 11/3)

Health insurer Aetna will spend $400 million on a technology company that could strengthen its push into a relatively small but growing area of employer-sponsored coverage: private exchanges that let workers choose their own plans. Aetna said Monday it is acquiring privately held Bswift, a Chicago-based company that provides technology for benefits administration and insurance purchases on private exchanges. More employers have been considering private insurance exchanges in recent years as a way to improve control over health care costs that consistently rise faster than inflation and consumer bigger portions of their budgets. Under this approach, businesses generally give their workers a set amount of money to purchase health insurance and then send them to a private exchange, where they pick from a number of plans. (11/3)

Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings, one of the largest U.S. medical testing companies, is entering the drug-development business by agreeing to buy Covance Inc. in a cash-and-stock deal worth about $6.1 billion, the companies said on Monday. (Walker, 11/3)

Tenet Healthcare Corp. said its third-quarter revenue soared and admissions continued to improve with a boost from the U.S. health-care policy overhaul. For the year, the hospital operator raised the lower end of its projection for adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization by $50 million and now expects to a range of $1.90 billion to $1.95 billion. (Stynes, 11/3)

Tenet Healthcare Corp. reported earnings that beat analysts estimates as the hospital company saw increased revenue from higher admissions and fewer uninsured patients under Obamacare. The hospital chain benefited from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, spending less on charity care for uninsured patients in states that have expanded Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor. About a quarter of Tenet’s patient beds are in states that have expanded Medicaid. (Pettypiece, 11/3)

For stocks, it’s just what the doctor ordered. Health care companies are leading the market’s rebound from a sharp sell-off two weeks ago, helping push the Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor’s 500 index back to record levels. (11/3)