Last week, the United States Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division announced the formation of the Task Force on Health Care Monopolies and Collusion (“HCMC”). The task force appears to have been inspired by concern for health care platforms that combine doctors with insurers, data, and other assets. For example, one platform company that combines a number of different health care industry sectors under its roof may be scrutinized by the HCMC. Leading the task force will be Katrina Rouse, an antitrust prosecutor who joined the DOJ’s antitrust division in 2011 and who served as a health care and consumer products section trial attorney.
The HCMC intends to consider the competition concerns of patients, health care professionals, businesses, and entrepreneurs, as well as approach the issues of payer-provider consolidation, serial acquisitions, labor and quality of care, medical billing, health care IT services, and access to and misuse of health care data, among others. To execute its mission, the DOJ stated that the HCMC will “bring together civil and criminal prosecutors, economists, health care industry experts, technologists, data scientists, investigators, and policy advisors from across the division’s Civil, Criminal, Litigation, and Policy Programs, and the Expert Analysis Group.”
Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter indicated that the increased focus on health care enforcement is a continuation of the Biden administration’s whole of government approach while the health care industry undergoes substantial changes due to technological and market forces.
Certain information in this blog post was sourced from Law360.
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