Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2011
Abstract
Although federal judges have resisted giving due effect to standard antitrust principles in scrutinizing mergers of nonprofit hospitals, the presence of health insurance makes it especially important to oppose monopoly in health services markets. U.S.-style health insurance gives monopolist providers extraordinary pricing freedom, thus exacerbating monopoly’s usual redistributive effects. Significant allocative inefficiencies - albeit not the kind generally associated with monopoly - also result when the monopolist is a nonprofit hospital. Because it is probably impossible to undo past hospital mergers creating undue market power, we suggest some alternative remedies. One is to apply antitrust rules against "tying" arrangements so that purchasers can more easily frustrate hospitals' profit-enhancing practice of overcharging for large bundles of services rather than separately exploiting each monopoly they possess. Another is to use antitrust or regulatory rules to prohibit anticompetitive contract clauses between providers and insurers, such as "anti-steering" or "most favored nation" clauses. These tools might help rectify the serious problem of provider market power that now imposes unsustainable costs onto our health care system.
Citation
Clark C. Havighurst & Barak D. Richman, The Provider-Monopoly Problem in Health Care, 89 Oregon Law Review 847-883 (2011)
Library of Congress Subject Headings
Nonprofit organizations, Hospital mergers, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Monopolies, Medical care, Cost of medical care, Health insurance
Included in
Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons, Health Law and Policy Commons, Insurance Law Commons
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/faculty_scholarship/2281