Aetna’s pullout of the Obamacare exchanges in 11 states was “retaliation” to the administration blocking the insurer’s merger with competitor Humana, Democrats charged Wednesday. The charges came after the Huffington Post reported on a letter in which Aetna’s CEO supposedly had “threatened” to pull out unless the government approved the merger.

HuffPo reporters write of Aetna’s CEO Mark Bertolini: “he made a clear threat: If President Barack Obama‘s administration refused to allow the merger to proceed, he wrote, Aetna would be in worse financial position and would have to withdraw from most of its Obamacare markets, and quite likely all of them.”