Tag: Competition

The Virginia Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers settled charges that it prohibited Virginia funeral directors and service providers from engaging in truthful advertising that would inform consumers of prices and discounts for funeral products and services. Under terms of the consent order, the Board is prohibited from engaging in such practices in the future and is required to amend its regulation prohibiting Board licensees from advertising funeral services including those services that can be contracted prior to the death of the person whose funeral is being planned.

With an administrative complaint issued on December 22, 2003 the Commission charged Piedmont Health Alliance, Inc. with collectively setting prices it demanded for physician services with third party payers. According to the complaint, the physician-hospital organization entered into signed agreements on behalf of its member physicians to participate in all contracts negotiated and to accept the negotiated physician fees. The complaint further alleges that these practices eliminated price competition among physicians in the North Carolina counties of Alexander, Burke, Caldwell and Catawba. The complaint also names ten individual physicians who participated in the alleged price fixing services. On August 10, 2004, the organization and physicians agreed to settle charges. Also refer to settlement entered with Tenet Healthcare Corporation (Frye Regional Medical Center, Inc.).

A consent order allowed GenCorp Inc. to acquire Atlantic Research Corporation while requiring the divestiture of Atlantic’s in-space liquid propulsion business within six months of consummating the transaction. According to the complaint issued with the consent order, the transaction as originally planned would have lessened competition in the United States in four different types of in-space propulsion engines: monopropellant thrusters; bipropellant apogee thrusters; dual mode apogee thrusters; and biopropellant attitude control thrusters.

The consent order, designed to preserve competition in the market for the manufacture and sale of mobile radio frequency automatic meter reading technologies for electric utilities in the United States, permitted Itron's $255 million acquisition of Schlumberger Electricity, Inc. The consent order requires Itron to grant a royalty-free, perpetual, and irrevocable license to Hunt Technologies, Inc., creating an effective competitor in this market that allows utility companies and others to gather electric consumption data automatically and remotely from electricity meters.

A Roswell, New Mexico physicians’ association, Southeastern New Mexico Physicians IPA, settled charges that it and two of its employees entered into collective agreements among physician members on fees and refused to deal with health plans that did not accept the collective agreed-upon terms. According to the complaint, these practices increased the price of health care in the Roswell area. The consent order prohibits the IPA and its employees named in the consent from orchestrating agreements between physicians to negotiate with health insurance plans on behalf of any physician and deal or refuse to deal individually with any third party payer.

Private attorneys in Clark County, Washington who provide criminal legal services for indigent defendants under a county contract settled charges that they illegally entered into an agreement known as the “Indigent Defense Bar Consortium Contract” to collectively demand higher fees for certain types of cases and refuse to accept specific additional cases unless the Clark County complied with their demands. The county was forced to substantially increase the reimbursement rate for each of the case categories specified in the Consortium Contract. According to the Commission, the conduct of the attorneys was identical to the boycott staged by criminal defense attorneys in Washington, DC which was ruled to be price fixing by the U.S. Supreme Court in the matter of Superior Court Trial Lawyers Association. Robert Lewis, James Sowder, Gerald Wear, and Joel R. Yoseph, the four attorneys who led the activities and served as the representatives of the 43 attorneys who signed the Consortium Contract, were named in the complaint and in the consent order.