Law Commons^™

The Use Of The Nonprofit "Defense" Under Section 7 Of The Clayton Act, Amanda J. Vaughn

Vanderbilt Law Review

Since the early 1980s, for-profit and nonprofit hospitals have undergone an unprecedented number of mergers,' reflecting the dramatic changes in the health care industry. The Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") and Department of Justice ("DOJ") have challenged mergers of both types of hospitals. Recently, however, a handful of nonprofit hospitals have offered nonprofit status as a "defense" to federal challenges to nonprofit hospital mergers. Although not a complete defense-nonprofit status alone does not remove the entity from antitrust scrutiny-a limited "defense" has evolved as nonprofit hospitals claim that a nonprofit merger is less likely to have anti- competitive effects than an …