“The need for greater collaboration among health care providers has never been more compelling,” the American Hospital Association said Sept. 9 in a statement for a House Ways and Means health subcommittee hearing on the impact of health care industry consolidation, noting that “[p]ersistent fragmentation contributes to gaps in quality and efficiency that adversely impact providers and their patients.” However, a lack of timely user-friendly guidance from the federal antitrust agencies on how antitrust laws and policies will be applied to such clinical integration arrangements among hospitals and other caregivers is impeding progress, the association said.
The AHA also urged the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division to be “increasingly vigilant about anticompetitive conduct on the part of entrenched health insurers” and commended the division for its recent stepped up enforcement. “We disagree with those who contend that hospitals – the object of so much antitrust scrutiny – have somehow acquired the power to dictate terms to health plans,” the association said, noting that mergers and market power of insurers have received comparatively little scrutiny.
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