Authors: Ruth Glaeser and Steven Cernak In her first major speech since taking the helm of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater spotlighted a growing concern: the power imbalance in America’s labor markets. Speaking in late April, Slater emphasized that antitrust laws are not solely designed…
Articles Posted in Health Care and Hospitals
The Third Circuit Rejects a Fraud Exception to the Noerr-Pennington Exemption from Antitrust Liability
Author: Ruth Glaeser The Third Circuit Court of Appeals held that Merck is exempt from antitrust claims under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine in a lawsuit accusing it of deceiving the government about the effectiveness of its mumps vaccine to prevent competition. Background from the Third Circuit’s Opinion Merck was the sole…
FTC Sues IQVIA To Block Healthcare Programmatic Advertising Acquisition
Authors: Molly Donovan & Steven Cernak Update: The FTC has won a preliminary injunction to stop IQVIA from acquiring Propel Media. The judge (Judge Ramos in the Southern District of New York) ruled the injunction is in the public’s interest and the FTC has shown a reasonable probability of a…
Lessons from the FTC’s Settlement of the Amgen/Horizon Merger Challenge
Authors: Steven Cernak and Luis Blanquez In case you missed it on the eve of a holiday weekend, the FTC and several states settled their challenge of Amgen’s acquisition of Horizon last Friday. The case might have seemed like an odd one to antitrust and merger practitioners looking only at…
Clear Articulation and the Classic Antitrust Case of FTC v. Phoebe Putney Health System
Authors: Luke Hasskamp and Aaron Gott This article briefly explores the applicability of federal antitrust laws to actions taken by municipalities or other state subdivisions and, specifically, whether they have acted pursuant to a clearly articulated state policy to displace competition in the marketplace. Federal antitrust laws are designed to…
Is Insurance Really Exempt from the U.S. Antitrust Laws?
Author: Jarod Bona In many instances, conduct involving the business of insurance is, indeed, exempt from antitrust liability. So why does insurance sometimes get a free pass? In 1945, Congress passed a law called The McCarran-Ferguson Act. Insurance, of course, has traditionally been regulated by the States. Territorial and jurisdictional disputes…
The Seventh Circuit Explains the “Co-Conspiracy Exception” to the Illinois Brick Rule in Healthcare Antitrust Lawsuit
Author: Jarod Bona Antitrust law evolves in such a way that opinions from federal appellate courts are always interesting in how they affect the doctrine. But there are a select few judges who earn even closer attention when they write an antitrust opinion. Judge Diane P. Wood of the United…
Iatrogenics, the Sad Tale of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, and Antitrust Lawyers
Author: Jarod Bona I bet your first question is “What is iatrogenics?” Have you ever gone to the doctor for something minor, only to take the prescribed medication and suffer through side effects that are worse than the initial ailment? Iatrogenics is your net loss in welfare from the doctor.…
Certificate-of-Need Laws, Evil Trolls, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune
Author: Jarod Bona We do our best to describe antitrust and other legal issues as straightforwardly as possible here. We tend to speak directly and avoid the guarded language that you often see from lawyers elsewhere (a little secret: most big-firm attorneys are afraid of getting in trouble in one…
COVID-19 Exposes Evil of Anticompetitive State Certificate of Need Laws
Authors: Aaron Gott and Jarod Bona The United States is in lockdown to “flatten the curve” of COVID-19 cases because our hospital system has even less capacity to handle a surge of cases than Italy—where overload has led physicians to have to make tough decisions about which patients deserve treatment…