Some interesting news on hospital merger and anti-trust enforcement.
A federal appeals court on Tuesday blocked the proposed merger of the two largest hospital systems in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, area.
By a 3-0 vote, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ordered a preliminary injunction against the combination of Penn State Hershey Medical Center and PinnacleHealth System.
The court said the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the commonwealth of Pennsylvania were likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the merger would be anti-competitive.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had a string of losses this spring at the district court level when they sued to stop mergers in Central Pennsylvania and Chicago. They lose in both cases at the district court level as the judges used (according to relevant healthcare economists) an obsolete standard of assessing market impact.
The FTC is one of the major administrative levers to break up consolidated provider pricing power and as long as the courts are willing to use the FTC’s preferred methodology of determining anti-competetive action, there is a lot of space for the FTC to act on new mergers.
catclub
I bet you have been waiting months for this thread title.
It must be sweet for the FTC. Even though the hospital Corp had crackerjack lawyers they couldn’t get this past them.
Amir Khalid
This is the best pun I’ve seen in a health-insurance post headline. Congratulations!
p.a.
Does the standard used by court x have any implications in the future for courts y, z…?
Does the standard used depend on the briefs and arguments presented by either side, or strictly the courts’ discretion?
MomSense
Interesting development.
BTW I noticed that there was not the 2012 level of ObamaCare discussion in the debate last night. I wonder if people are moving on and the issue just doesn’t poll as well as a scare tactic anymore.
p.a.
@MomSense: Good point, as I believe the official Trumpublican position is
Repeal
???
Awesomeness
Prescott Cactus
Hershey barred and nuts removed.
Film at 10pm
Patricia Kayden
Good news for patients.
Bubblegum Tate
As a Hershey native who has warm fuzzies for the town in general and Hershey Medical Center in particular (because my dad worked there back in the day), I am happy to hear this. Viva Hershey Med!
agorabum
The feds really need to stop more of these types of mergers in general; I think there is a good argument that the real hollowing out of the midwest and rust belt comes from corporate mergers leading to closed offices and consolidated corporate HQs elsewhere, so where there were 8 HQs in 8 states there is now one. There was an interesting examination of St Louis regarding those types of issues.