Blog

We are excited to announce the publication of the first peer-reviewed journal article coming out of the FTC’s Physician 6(b) study. The paper, published in the May 2025 issue of Health Affairs Scholar, provides an overview of the merger activity within 15 states between 2015 and 2020 (inclusive). The study identifies approximately 2,000 physician mergers during that period and characterizes the mergers in several ways, including: 38% of doctors...

The FTC is cracking down on companies attempting to deceive people seeking treatment for addiction. An example of this effort is the FTC’s recently filed settlement to resolve allegations that Evoke Wellness and two of its executives used illegal tactics to trick people seeking substance use disorder treatment services.

If you prescribe eyeglasses or contact lenses, you must give patients copies of their prescriptions any time you perform a refraction exam. Even if the patient doesn’t ask for it. At no extra charge.

This week, just in time for the start of football ticket sales season, the FTC announced Bureau of Consumer Protection staff sent a warning letter to a company in the business. The issue? According to the letter, the ticket seller may have been violating the FTC’s Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees (Fees Rule), which went into effect May 12. The Fees Rule prevents deception by requiring businesses to display the total price for live-event tickets...

It’s advertising law 101: before you claim your product can perform a certain task, you need evidence it will work as promised. If your product doesn’t live up to the hype, you’ll have to deal with the consequences—which could include a potential FTC lawsuit. That’s the lesson from a recently announced settlement between the FTC and accessiBe, a company that advertised its online plug-in as a fully automated tool to make any website compliant...

According to the FTC’s latest Data Spotlight, text scam losses are skyrocketing. In 2024 people reported $470 million in losses to text scams, more than five times the amount reported in 2020. Check out the Data Spotlight for more information. Want to help your employees spot and avoid the most common text scams highlighted by the Data Spotlight? Check out the FTC’s Consumer Alert with details and advice. Here are a few examples of text scams...

It’s hard not to glance at your phone when you hear the ding of an incoming text. Scammers bet on it. And reports to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network suggest their odds of a big payout have improved: reported losses to text scams have skyrocketed even as the number of reports declined. In 2024, people reported $470 million in losses to these scams, more than five times the 2020 number. And since the vast majority of frauds are never reported, this number likely reflects only a fraction of the actual harm.

Fans want to know that when tickets to their favorite artist’s summer tour drop, they have a chance of getting good seats at face value. They don’t want to have to compete with people cheating the system by buying more tickets than allowed by the ticket seller. And they really don’t want to have to buy their tickets at seriously inflated prices from ticket resellers who cheated the system. That’s the problem Congress was trying to address with...

They say April showers bring May flowers. April also marks the one-year anniversary of the FTC’s Impersonation Rule, which gives the FTC more tools to fight impersonation scams that cost nearly $3 billion in reported losses during 2024. Impersonation scams hurt people and legitimate businesses. Here’s what the FTC is doing to fight these scams. Impersonators pretend to be someone they’re not to try to steal your money or personal information...

Maybe you’re opening a small business or hiring a household employee? Or you’re starting a nonprofit or administering an estate? If you’re creating or reorganizing a legal entity, chances are you’re going to need an Internal Revenue Service (IRS)-assigned Employer Identification Number (EIN) to file your taxes and confirm your organization’s identity. The IRS’s website has a free and easy tool to get one, but scammers don’t tell you that. Today...