Antitrust and Nonprofit Hospital Mergers: A Return to Basics
Barak D. Richman
Duke University - School of Law
University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 156, 2007
Duke Law School Legal Studies Paper No. 156
Duke Science, Technology & Innovation Paper No. 15
Courts reviewing proposed mergers of nonprofit hospitals have been abandoning the bedrock principles of antitrust law, failing to pay heed to the most elemental hallmarks of socially beneficial competition - maximizing allocative efficiency and total surplus. This article suggests that courts' inability to recognize antitrust concerns in these cases reflects a failure to understand the structural details of the American health care market. After reviewing recent cases in which courts have denied challenges to proposed mergers between nonprofit hospitals, it documents how courts have engaged in a faulty analysis that ultimately protect nonprofit hospitals from the rigors of standard antitrust scrutiny. It then identifies the bedrock principles of antitrust law - preventing supracompetitive prices, optimizing output, and maximizing allocative efficiency - that have been absent from, if not violated by, the rulings in these merger cases.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 31
Keywords: nonprofits, hospital mergers, health care competition
JEL Classification: L44, K21, L31Accepted Paper Series
Date posted: March 26, 2007 ; Last revised: January 30, 2014
© 2014 Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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