In February 2024, the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Health and Human Services, and Department of Justice (collectively, the “Agencies”) issued a Request for Information (“RFI”) regarding Consolidation in Health Care Markets. The Agencies subsequently announced their intention to “tackle anticompetitive practices in the health care markets” by inviting individuals to file online complaints through a designated portal at www.HealthyCompetition.gov (the “Portal”).
The Portal provides another avenue to alert the Agencies to the types of anti-competitive conduct that imperil the future of the private practice of medicine. The Agencies provided multiple examples of anticompetitive conduct on the www.HealthyCompetition.gov website, several of which validated feedback that our firm has received from a number of our clients. For example: “A hospital system buys other hospitals, outpatient facilities, or medical practices. It also alters its referral patterns to favor its practices over competing hospital systems.”
Whether or not you choose to submit a Comment to the RFI, the Portal presents a separate opportunity to alert the Agencies to issues of concern in your local or regional health care market, as well as issues that are national in scope. Note that the Agencies are only eliciting information about healthcare competition; they have specifically requested that grievants refrain from submitting “complaints about failure to pay claims or cover healthcare services, increases in individual insurers’ rates, billing disputes, or general unhappiness about the healthcare system.” Ultimately, the most impactful complaints will raise sufficient concern under the antitrust laws or be related to HHS authorities, and will be selected for further inquiry by the appropriate Agency, which may lead to the opening of a formal investigation.
Frier Levitt’s Advocacy and Government Affairs Practice Group collaborates with our clients to advance their policy objectives at the local, regional, and national level. For more information about our work, call Frier Levitt to speak with an attorney.
