The Price Effects of Hospital Mergers

The Price Effects of Hospital Mergers PDF

Author: Federal Trade Commission

Publisher:

Published: 2014-09-25

Total Pages: 30

ISBN-13: 9781502493859

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This consummated merger combined two hospitals located close together in the Oakland-Berkeley region of the San Francisco Bay Area. The greater metropolitan area contained many other hospitals that offered a similar range of services, but which were located farther away. A central issue raised by the Sutter-Summit transaction was whether travel costs were low enough such that these hospitals were a sufficient constraint on the merging parties to prevent an anticompetitive price increase. We use detailed claims data from three large health insurers to compare the post-merger price change for the merging parties to the price change for a set of control group hospitals. Our results show that Summit's price increase was among the largest of any comparable hospital in California, indicating this transaction may have been anticompetitive.

Health Care Mergers and Acquisitions Handbook

Health Care Mergers and Acquisitions Handbook PDF

Author:

Publisher: American Bar Association

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 9781590312230

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The health care industry continues to undergo unprecedented consolidation. Health care providers and payors alike have pursued a wide variety of integrative strategies to achieve efficiencies or other business advantages. The Health Care Mergers and Acquisitions Handbook is designed to educate the practitioner about the antitrust analysis of mergers and acquisitions within the health care industry. Over the past two decades there has been an extraordinary amount of litigation related to challenges of hospital mergers. Each chapter identifies and analyzes important antitrust issues governing such consolidations. Accordingly, the first several chapters are devoted to a detailed treatment of substantive issues peculiar to such mergers: an introduction to hospital merger litigation, describing trends in litigation and the way in which such mergers are analyzed; issues unique to market definition, including product market definition and geographic market definition; the competitive effects of hospital mergers, assessing the evidence necessary to establish a prima facie case in a merger challenge and the rebuttal arguments offered by merging parties; a unique rebuttal argument offered by merging hospitals that is treated separately due to its prominent role in hospital merger litigation - the role and significance of efficiencies in determining the competitive merits of such mergers; the potential applicability of the state action doctrine to hospital mergers. In addition to a substantive treatment of hospital mergers, the Handbook also addresses; combinations of health care management organizations (HMOs) and physician practice groups; the analysis used by the enforcement agencies when reviewing mergers of HMOs; antitrust issues posed by physician practice consolidations. The appendix contains a chart summarizing litigated hospital mergers.--

In the Shadow of Antitrust Enforcement

In the Shadow of Antitrust Enforcement PDF

Author: Keith Brand

Publisher:

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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We examine 558 hospital mergers during a period of increased antitrust enforcement. Using US data on commercially insured patients from 2009-2016, we estimate an average price effect of roughly 5% with a smaller effect for mergers later in the sample. Mergers between hospitals that were substitutes for patients, in unconcentrated insurance markets, and less likely to lead to efficiencies had higher price increases. Using administrative data on merger investigations, we estimate higher than average price increases for mergers selected for more detailed investigation and find no evidence of higher than average price increases for non-reportable mergers.