Antitrust Legislation and Healthcare
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890) was designed to promote competitive practices in the marketplace and protect consumers from price gouging and other egregious practices generated from a lack of competition in monopolistic markets. It was not originally designed to impact the healthcare market but over the years its protections have been extended to do so
Strengths
Antitrust and anticompetitive laws were not always applied to physician and healthcare conduct. But in Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar (1975), the “Supreme Court made it clear that professional conduct that interfered with normal market processes would face a heavy burden of justification and might even be unlawful per se” (Sage, Hyman, & Greenberg, 2003, par. 18). This ensured that collusion between healthcare providers, including withholding information, was illegal. It also meant that it was illegal to limit the actions of consumer ratings agencies which graded physicians and other healthcare providers. This was deemed to be necessary to the free flow of information needed for commercial activity. Antitrust laws are thus designed to promote transparency as well as consumer choice, given that transparency is necessary for a competitive economic system to flourish.
Weaknesses
Perhaps unsurprisingly, physicians have been largely opposed...
References
Chamseddine, J. (2015). Obamacare, antitrust laws can coexist, says FTC official.
Washington Health Policy Week in Review. Retrieved from: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/newsletters/washington-health-policy- in-review/2015/dec/dec-21-2015/obamacare-antitrust-laws-can-coexist
Cohen, J. (2012). How antitrust laws hinder the goals of healthcare reform. Medical Economics.
Retrieved from: http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/medical- economics/news/modernmedicine/modern-medicine-now/how-antitrust-laws-hinder- goals-healthcare?page=full
Sage, W., Hyman, D. & Greenberg, W. (2003). Why competition law matters to healthcare
quality. Health Affairs, 22(2) 31-44. Retrieved from:
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/22/2/31.full
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