FTC highlights focus on health care markets competition before Judiciary subcommittee

The USA’s Federal Trade Commission described its ongoing efforts to protect competition and consumers in many important sectors of the economy, including health care, pharmaceuticals, and technology, in testimony to a House of Representatives Judiciary subcommittee on Friday (November 15).

Testifying on behalf of the FTC before the Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Laws, Chairwoman Edith Ramirez stated: “In an effort to be most effective with limited resources, we pay particular attention to sectors where our action will provide the greatest benefit to the largest number of consumers. Chief among those are health care and the technology sector.”

The testimony outlines the FTC’s critical work promoting competition in health care markets, noting that health care consolidation can threaten to undermine efforts to control rising health care costs. Examples of the FTC actions to prevent anticompetitive health care mergers include litigation involving proposed hospital mergers that threaten higher prices and lower quality of care, as well as divestitures in pharmaceutical mergers to preserve competition and maintain competitive pricing for needed medications, she said.