DoJ forms task force on competition, monopolies in healthcare

The Department of Justice (DoJ) recently announced the formation of a task force dedicated to investigating competition in healthcare.

The Task Force on Health Care Monopolies and Collusion (HCMC) will be part of the Department’s Antitrust Division, guiding its enforcement strategy and policy approach in healthcare, including facilitating policy advocacy, investigating cases of anticompetitive behaviors, and civilly and criminally enforcing antitrust regulations in healthcare markets.

Katrina Rouse, an antitrust prosecutor who joined the Antitrust Division over a decade ago, will direct the HCMC. Rouse previously served as Chief of the division’s Defense, Industrials and Aerospace Section, Assistant Chief of the Division’s San Francisco Office, a special assistant U.S. attorney and a trial attorney in the division’s Healthcare and Consumer Products Section.

The team will also include civil and criminal prosecutors, economists, healthcare 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.

The HCMC team will look into “widespread competition concerns” brought on by patients, healthcare professionals, businesses and entrepreneurs, including issues around payer-provider consolidation, serial acquisitions, labor and quality of care, medical billing, healthcare IT services and access to and misuse of healthcare data.

“Every year, Americans spend trillions of dollars on health care, money that is increasingly being gobbled up by a small number of payers, providers and dominant intermediaries that have consolidated their way to power in communities across the country,” Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, said in the announcement. “Led by Katrina Rouse, the task force will identify and root out monopolies and collusive practices that increase costs, decrease quality and create single points of failure in the health care industry.”

Diminished competition in healthcare has been a major concern for industry stakeholders and policymakers as of late.

Last month, the DoJ, HHS, and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an online portal that allows the public to report any anti-competitive behaviors they see in the healthcare sector that may be impacting care quality and affordability. The FTC and DoJ will review complaints, escalating any that may violate anti-trust laws, such as consolidation, fair wage issues for healthcare workers, collusion or price fixing among competitors, and prevention of price transparency.

Widespread consolidation in healthcare has raised concerns about pricing in the industry, as well as quality of care. Healthcare merger and acquisition activity generated $12 billion in the first quarter of 2024 alone, as dealmaking regains momentum following the COVID-19 pandemic.

A recent study in American Economic Review: Insights found that lax anti-trust enforcement from the FTC and other regulatory bodies has contributed to less competition in healthcare and higher prices for hospital care.