FTC, DOJ, and HHS Announce Interagency Initiatives to Promote Healthcare Competitors

Final week the Federal Commerce Fee (FTC) issued a press launch highlighting latest and forthcoming actions by the FTC, Division of Justice (DOJ), and the Division of Well being and Human Companies (HHS), which they are saying will additional promote competitors, thereby decreasing prices and rising the standard of care within the U.S. well being care market. Along with highlighting latest actions by every of the businesses (e.g., the FTC’s proposed non-compete rule), the discharge states that the three businesses are getting into into new partnerships to extend interagency cooperation and advance a “whole-of-government” strategy to guard well being care competitors, together with:

• A joint Request for Data issued by the three businesses searching for enter into how private-equity companies and different companies’ “management of well being care” impacts People.
• A partnership between the three businesses to share information that may “assist establish probably anticompetitive transactions which may in any other case evade overview.” This might result in scrutiny of transactions that aren’t reportable beneath the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act.
• The creation and appointment of a brand new “Counsel for Well being Care” at every company that may lead interagency and coverage efforts on well being care competitors.
• The continuation of a partnership between the DOJ and HHS’s Workplace of the Inspector Basic, memorialized late final yr, that goals to extend coordination between the DOJ and HHS OIG to make use of the antitrust legal guidelines and OIG’s exclusion authorities to strengthen enforcement of federal legislation.

Within the launch FTC Chair Lina Khan, Assistant Lawyer Basic Jonathan Kanter of the DOJ Antitrust Division, and Secretary Xavier Becerra every affirm their dedication to sustaining competitors in well being care markets and making well being care extra inexpensive and accessible for People.

This serves as yet one more reminder that well being care continues to be a precedence for not simply antitrust enforcers, however for the federal authorities writ massive, and that corporations within the well being care business ought to anticipate continued or elevated scrutiny from federal enforcement businesses.