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Full-Text Articles in Law

How Much Of Health Care Antitrust Is Really Antitrust?, Spencer Weber Waller Jul 2019

How Much Of Health Care Antitrust Is Really Antitrust?, Spencer Weber Waller

Spencer Weber Waller

No abstract provided.


Health Care's Market Bureaucracy, Allison K. Hoffman Jan 2019

Health Care's Market Bureaucracy, Allison K. Hoffman

All Faculty Scholarship

The last several decades of health law and policy have been built on a foundation of economic theory. This theory supported the proliferation of market-based policies that promised maximum efficiency and minimal bureaucracy. Neither of these promises has been realized. A mounting body of empirical research discussed in this Article makes clear that leading market-based policies are not efficient — they fail to capture what people want. Even more, this Article describes how the struggle to bolster these policies — through constant regulatory, technocratic tinkering that aims to improve the market and the decision-making of consumers in it — has …


How Much Of Health Care Antitrust Is Really Antitrust?, Spencer Weber Waller Jan 2017

How Much Of Health Care Antitrust Is Really Antitrust?, Spencer Weber Waller

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.


Hospital Mergers And Economic Efficiency, Roger D. Blair, Christine Piette Durrance, D. Daniel Sokol May 2016

Hospital Mergers And Economic Efficiency, Roger D. Blair, Christine Piette Durrance, D. Daniel Sokol

D. Daniel Sokol

Consolidation via merger both from hospital-to-hospital mergers and from hospital acquisitions of physician groups is changing the competitive landscape of the provision of health care delivery in the United States. This Article undertakes a legal and economic examination of a recent Ninth Circuit case examining the hospital acquisition of a physician group. This Article explores the Saint Alphonsus Medical Center-Nampa Inc. v. St. Luke’s Health System, Ltd. (St. Luke’s) decision—proposing a type of analysis that the district court and Ninth Circuit should have undertaken and that we hope future courts undertake when analyzing mergers in the …


Assembled Products: The Key To More Effective Competition And Antitrust Oversight In Health Care, William M. Sage Apr 2016

Assembled Products: The Key To More Effective Competition And Antitrust Oversight In Health Care, William M. Sage

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that recent calls for antitrust enforcement to protect health insurers from hospital and physician consolidation are incomplete. The principal obstacle to effective competition in health care is not that one or the other party has too much bargaining power, but that they have been buying and selling the wrong things. Vigorous antitrust enforcement will benefit health care consumers only if it accounts for the competitive distortions caused by the sector’s long history of government regulation. Because of regulation, what pass for products in health care are typically small process steps and isolated components that can be assigned …


Hospital Mergers And Economic Efficiency, Roger D. Blair, Christine Piette Durrance, D. Daniel Sokol Mar 2016

Hospital Mergers And Economic Efficiency, Roger D. Blair, Christine Piette Durrance, D. Daniel Sokol

UF Law Faculty Publications

Consolidation via merger both from hospital-to-hospital mergers and from hospital acquisitions of physician groups is changing the competitive landscape of the provision of health care delivery in the United States. This Article undertakes a legal and economic examination of a recent Ninth Circuit case examining the hospital acquisition of a physician group. This Article explores the Saint Alphonsus Medical Center-Nampa Inc. v. St. Luke’s Health System, Ltd. (St. Luke’s) decision—proposing a type of analysis that the district court and Ninth Circuit should have undertaken and that we hope future courts undertake when analyzing mergers in the …


Quality-Enhancing Merger Efficiencies, Roger D. Blair, D. Daniel Sokol Nov 2015

Quality-Enhancing Merger Efficiencies, Roger D. Blair, D. Daniel Sokol

D. Daniel Sokol

The appropriate role of merger efficiencies remains unresolved in US antitrust law and policy. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has led to a significant shift in health care delivery. The ACA promises that increased integration and a shift from quantity of performance through increased competition will create a system in which quality will go up and prices will go down. Increasingly, due to the economic trends that respond to the ACA, including considerable consolidation both horizontally and vertically, it is imperative that the antitrust agencies provide an economically sound and administrable legal approach to efficiency enhancing mergers. …


Quality-Enhancing Merger Efficiencies, Roger D. Blair, D. Daniel Sokol May 2015

Quality-Enhancing Merger Efficiencies, Roger D. Blair, D. Daniel Sokol

UF Law Faculty Publications

The appropriate role of merger efficiencies remains unresolved in US antitrust law and policy. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has led to a significant shift in health care delivery. The ACA promises that increased integration and a shift from quantity of performance through increased competition will create a system in which quality will go up and prices will go down. Increasingly, due to the economic trends that respond to the ACA, including considerable consolidation both horizontally and vertically, it is imperative that the antitrust agencies provide an economically sound and administrable legal approach to efficiency enhancing mergers. …


Licensing Health Care Professionals, State Action And Antitrust Policy, Roger D. Blair, Christine Piette Durrance May 2015

Licensing Health Care Professionals, State Action And Antitrust Policy, Roger D. Blair, Christine Piette Durrance

UF Law Faculty Publications

In this Essay, we raise some economic concerns about the wisdom of conferring antitrust immunity on professional licensing boards, which are often comprised of members of the profession and therefore apt to be motivated by self-interest rather than the public interest. In Part II, we examine the political economy of special interest legislation, which suggests that little public good results from replacing competitive market forces with self-regulation. In Part III, we employ a basic economic model to generate predictions of the economic effects of professional licensing. Part IV provides a survey of the empirical research in this area, which confirms …


The Messenger Model: Don't Ask, Don't Tell?, Jeffrey L. Harrison Nov 2014

The Messenger Model: Don't Ask, Don't Tell?, Jeffrey L. Harrison

Jeffrey L Harrison

This article makes the case that the messenger model is either tacitly or inadvertently a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to competitor cooperation. In addition, this article presents an economic framework that explains how such a policy may benefit health care consumers. Finally, it is suggested that the "don't ask, don't tell" policy has created an area of per se legality that precludes an examination designed to distinguish consumer-benefiting practices from those that provide no benefit.


Insights From A National Conference: "Conflicts Of Interest In The Practice Of Medicine", David Orentlicher Jan 2012

Insights From A National Conference: "Conflicts Of Interest In The Practice Of Medicine", David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.


Antitrust & Hospital Mergers: Does The Nonprofit Form Affect Competitive Substance?, Thomas L. Greaney Jan 2006

Antitrust & Hospital Mergers: Does The Nonprofit Form Affect Competitive Substance?, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

Following a string of government losses in cases challenging hospital mergers in federal court, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice issued their report on competition in health care seeking to set the record straight on a number of issues that underlie the judiciary's resolution of these cases. One such issue is the import of nonprofit status for applying antitrust law. This essay describes antitrust's role in addressing the consolidation in the hospital sector and the subtle influence that the social function of the nonprofit hospital has had in merger litigation. Noting that the political and social context …


Chicago's Procrustean Bed: Applying Antitrust Law In Health Care, Thomas L. Greaney Jan 2004

Chicago's Procrustean Bed: Applying Antitrust Law In Health Care, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

Antitrust enforcement in health care has undergone considerable buffeting in recent years with government agencies losing a string of important cases in federal court and support for vigorous enforcement waning among some policymakers. Critics of doctrinal development in antitrust law have begun to question whether the underlying economic relationships are accurately reflected in the law of antitrust as applied in health care. This article advances the positive claim that antitrust doctrine often suppresses pertinent features of the health care marketplace and urges courts and enforcers to pause before applying precedent and evidentiary rules of thumb that do not fit the …


The Messenger Model: Don't Ask, Don't Tell?, Jeffrey L. Harrison Jan 2004

The Messenger Model: Don't Ask, Don't Tell?, Jeffrey L. Harrison

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article makes the case that the messenger model is either tacitly or inadvertently a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to competitor cooperation. In addition, this article presents an economic framework that explains how such a policy may benefit health care consumers. Finally, it is suggested that the "don't ask, don't tell" policy has created an area of per se legality that precludes an examination designed to distinguish consumer-benefiting practices from those that provide no benefit.


Most Favored Nation Clauses, Jonathan Baker, William Kopit, Thomas Overstreet, Robert Mcnair, Jr., Steven Snow May 2003

Most Favored Nation Clauses, Jonathan Baker, William Kopit, Thomas Overstreet, Robert Mcnair, Jr., Steven Snow

Presentations

Event descriptionThe Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice will commence public hearings in Washington, D.C. on February 26, 2003 on the implications of competition law and policy for health care financing and delivery. The hearings will broadly consider the impact of competition law and policy on the cost, quality, and availability of health care, and the incentives for innovation in the field.Specific subjects to be considered include hospital mergers, the significance of non-profit status, vertical integration, quality and efficiencies, the boundaries of the state action and Noerr-Pennington doctrines, monopsony power, the adequacy of existing remedies for anticompetitive conduct, and …


Antitrust, Health Care Quality, And The Courts, Peter J. Hammer, William M. Sage Jan 2002

Antitrust, Health Care Quality, And The Courts, Peter J. Hammer, William M. Sage

Law Faculty Research Publications

Antitrust law represents the principal legal tool that the United States employs to police private markets, yet it often relegates quality and nonprice considerations to a secondary position. While antitrust law espouses the belief that vigorous competition will enhance quality as well as price, little evidence exists of the practical ability of courts to deliver on that promise. In this Article, Professors Hammer and Sage examine American health care as a vehicle for advancing understanding of the nexus among competition, quality, and antitrust law. The Article reports the results of a comprehensive empirical review of judicial opinions in health care …


Questioning Traditional Antitrust Presumptions: Price And Non-Price Competition In Hospital Markets, Peter J. Hammer Jul 1999

Questioning Traditional Antitrust Presumptions: Price And Non-Price Competition In Hospital Markets, Peter J. Hammer

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Hospital mergers challenge basic assumptions about the effects of market power in the health care industry. Antitrust courts have struggled with claims that hospital mergers may in fact reduce costs and lower prices. This Article assesses the validity of these economic claims in the context of an industry that has undergone radical transformations in recent years. The Article also explores how such arguments should be treated as a matter of antitrust doctrine in an area of the law that relies heavily on market share presumptions and rule-based decision making. The Article contends that courts should employ a total welfare standard …


Competing On Quality Of Care: The Need To Develop A Competition Policy For Health Care Markets, William M. Sage, Peter J. Hammer Jan 1999

Competing On Quality Of Care: The Need To Develop A Competition Policy For Health Care Markets, William M. Sage, Peter J. Hammer

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

As American health care moves from a professionally dominated to a market-dominated model, concerns have been voiced that competition, once unleashed, will focus on price to the detriment of quality. Although quality has been extensively analyzed in health services research, the role of quality in competition policy has not been elucidated. While economists may theorize about non-price competition, courts in antitrust cases often follow simpler models of competition based on price and output, either ignoring quality as a competitive dimension or assuming that it will occur in tandem with price competition. This unsystematic approach is inadequate for the formulation of …


Night Landings On An Aircraft Carrier: Hospital Mergers And Antitrust Law, Thomas L. Greaney Jan 1997

Night Landings On An Aircraft Carrier: Hospital Mergers And Antitrust Law, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

Abstract: Analysis of the competitive effects of hospital mergers requires antitrust tribunals to make exceedingly fine-tuned appraisals of complex economic relationships. The law requires fact finding in a number of complex areas, e.g., defining product and geographic markets, predicting the possibility of that firms will engage in coordinated behavior; and assessing efficiencies flowing from the merger. Further complicating the process is the fact that these decisions require judgments regarding what the future may hold in an industry undergoing revolutionary change. Like pilots landing at night aboard an aircraft carrier, courts are aiming for a target that is small, shifting and …


Can Hmos Wield Market Power? Assessing Antitrust Liability In The Imperfect Market For Health Care Financing , Mark L. Glassman Oct 1996

Can Hmos Wield Market Power? Assessing Antitrust Liability In The Imperfect Market For Health Care Financing , Mark L. Glassman

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.


"In The Twinkling Of An Eye": A Proporsal For The Standard Of Legality To Be Applied In Hospital Staff Privileges Cases, Sarah Bartholomew Ellerbee Jan 1994

"In The Twinkling Of An Eye": A Proporsal For The Standard Of Legality To Be Applied In Hospital Staff Privileges Cases, Sarah Bartholomew Ellerbee

LLM Theses and Essays

This paper addresses one of the most troublesome aspects of antitrust jurisprudence. What standard of legality governs cases dealing with medical staff privileges decisions? Heretofore, it was generally thought that only two options existed. The most frequently used standard of legality for this type of case is the rule of reason. In using this analysis, the court looks at the restraint of trade of the reasonableness of its nature, and its purpose and effect. The pro-competitive aspects of the conduct are weighed against the restraints that the conduct imposes on the competition. In health care cases, courts have looked at …


Quality Of Care And Market Failure Defenses In Antitrust Health Care Litigation, Thomas L. Greaney Jan 1989

Quality Of Care And Market Failure Defenses In Antitrust Health Care Litigation, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

This article considers quality-based justifications for antitrust challenges to collaboration among health care professionals. It first examines doctrinal developments resisting such justifications and, with a skeptical eye, analyzes attempts to interject quality of care and worthy motive defenses into antitrust appraisals of horizontal restraints of trade. Next the article assesses the economic basis and the risks and benefits of a market failure defense that would allow some quality-enhancing restraints of trade to escape antitrust challenge. Its principle recommendation is that courts recognize a narrow, market failure defense subject to several limiting principles to cabin its reach. The article concludes by …


Relative Value Guides And The Sherman Antitrust Act, David R. Simonsen, Jr. Jan 1980

Relative Value Guides And The Sherman Antitrust Act, David R. Simonsen, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

The skyrocketing costs of health care services for the American people constitute a crisis of national importance.' The seriousness of this crisis is reflected in the attention that antitrust enforcement agencies of the federal government are giving to the health care industry. The agencies are responding, at least in part, to the common perception that these skyrocketing costs result as much from the restrictive trade practices of the health care industry as from the growing use of sophisticated technology and inflation. Competition is viewed as an antidote to increasing prices and antitrust laws as the vehicle by which federal agencies …