Blog Posts Tagged with Health Care

With the passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA), Congress required pharmaceutical companies to file certain patent settlement agreements with the FTC.

The PNO routinely provides informal guidance on Hart-Scott-Rodino reporting obligations that arise when combining not-for-profit entities, typically in the context of hospital combinations. In the past, much of this guidance focused on whether the combination resulted in a change of "control" of the board of directors of one or more of the combining entities. This was because those seeking guidance described hospital combinations primarily in terms of formal board governance.

Chirping birds, babbling brooks, soft rain showers, and children gleefully playing outdoors – these sounds of spring bring us joy, especially after a long winter. But for the millions of Americans who have hearing loss, full enjoyment of these and other everyday sounds can be out of reach. Others might benefit from listening assistance in certain situations, such as in a noisy restaurant or while watching TV. For too many, even participation in a simple conversation can be difficult.

Yesterday, I spoke to a group of antitrust practitioners and those involved in healthcare policy at AAI’s Healthcare Roundtable, where I discussed past and present FTC work to promote competition in healthcare markets.

Now available on the FTC website: the Bureau of Competition’s Health Care Division has posted updated versions of our three overviews of FTC enforcement actions and policy work in the health care sector undertaken across the Bureau. Together, these documents contain hundreds of pages of detailed summaries of four decades of FTC efforts to promote competition in healthcare markets – which make them invaluable resources for health care antitrust practitioners, market participants, and other stakeholders.

There is a basic but important difference between antitrust cases brought by the government and those brought by private parties: All plaintiffs, including government enforcers like the FTC, must prove an antitrust violation, which requires showing harm to competition. But private plaintiffs must make an additional showing: to establish antitrust ‘standing,’ private plaintiffs must prove that the antitrust violation caused harm to them.

In a variety of industries, the FTC advocates for policies that promote competition. Why? Because studies show competition works, for our citizens and for our economy. Competition typically improves consumer welfare through lower prices, expanded output, better service and more innovation.

Consumers frequently contact the Bureau of Competition to alert us that the cost of a prescription drug suddenly spiked up, and ask if the FTC can take antitrust action to bring the price back down. The answer in a nutshell is that it depends on the reason for the price change.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court affirmed the Fourth Circuit’s decision to uphold the FTC’s order against the North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners In a tour-de-force opinion laying out the proper scope of the state action doctrine first articulated in Parker v.