The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) continues to act as an impediment to beneficial hospital mergers. Recently cultivated institutional biases against consolidation in general and highly inaccurate myths about hospital systems are underpinning this attitude. Anti-trust laws, which the FTC is attempting to apply to hospitals, were designed to ensure fair and open competitive markets — not to eliminate entire segments of an industry. These laws were intended to help keep consumer prices reasonable and market-based by preventing monopolization, notes The Hill.
But the FTC’s crusade against any and all mergers, including those in the health care sector, is not based on objective empirical analysis of health care markets and will therefore have the opposite effect. By effectively forcing smaller and rural hospitals to close, specialty and emergency care will be concentrated in a few large urban hospitals, driving up costs for everyone — especially patients in rural and economically disadvantaged communities. Read more.
