While Buncombe County leaders were talking to North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein recently about fallout from the HCA Health Care-Mission deal, a judge in Raleigh was reviewing a class-action, anti-trust lawsuit alleging the company has a monopoly on health care in Western North Carolina, the Citizen Times reports.
N.C. Business Court Judge Mark Davis heard the case for the first time April 27, one day before Stein visited Asheville for a hospital merger roundtable discussion with officials, doctors, nurses and community members.
HCA said the plaintiffs failed to show that the company had “unlawfully acquired or maintained monopoly power.”
The original complaint, filed Aug. 10, charges the Nashville-based hospital company with “restraint of trade and unlawful monopolization.” Read more.
