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How Trump could fast-track healthcare mergers

Greenbeard

Greenbeard

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The brief effort to tap the brakes on health care consolidation (and, for that matter, the ongoing erosion of competitive markets in industries economy-wide) has ended. Last week Trump officially rescinded Biden's EO committing the federal government to an all-of-government approach to promoting competition in the American economy.

I'm sure lots of sectors are salivating at the prospect of less antitrust scrutiny.

How Trump could fast-track healthcare mergers
Trump last week withdrew a 2021 executive order on competition issued by former President Joe Biden. The executive order had broadly reaffirmed federal agencies’ role in breaking up monopolies and boosting competition across all sectors of the economy.

The order’s removal signals an ongoing ideological shift from an active oversight philosophy under the Biden administration to the Trump administration’s free-market approach, antitrust experts and merger and acquisition advisers said. However, organizations must still contend with increasingly rigorous state-led merger reviews.
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What did the Biden-era executive order say?

The order enlisted federal agencies to promote competition, enforce antitrust laws and update merger guidelines to reverse decades of consolidation across industries — including healthcare.

Biden had specifically called out the widespread use of noncompete clauses, which are contract provisions that prevent employees from joining rival companies, to suppress wage growth and drugmakers exploiting patent laws to stave off generic competitors. These were among a series of anticompetitive trends that limited choices, drove up prices, constrained wages and reduced innovation, the order said.

Barak Richman, a law professor at George Washington University, said the order represented an important policy designed to coordinate agencies’ response to lopsided markets.

“The Biden executive order signaled an all-government approach to competition that was long needed,” he said.

Why did Trump revoke the order?

Trump has been unwinding a number of Biden-era policies he says contradict his administration’s ideology, including some that protected LGBTQ+ people in healthcare settings and extended enrollment for Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges.

While the elimination of the policies may not have an immediate effect, it could pave the way for Trump and his administration to craft regulations that reverse his predecessor’s initiatives.
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How will eliminating the order affect industry oversight?

Trump’s withdrawal of the order indicates that the administration may be less hostile to businesses looking to grow through mergers and acquisitions, industry observers said. Hospitals and other healthcare companies could spend less time and money battling federal watchdogs over proposed deals as a result, they said.

“This likely means there is more willingness to allow transactions that might’ve died under scrutiny in the past,” said Ken Field, an attorney who specializes in antitrust and healthcare law at the law firm Hogan Lovells. “That sentiment has been borne out in the administration’s willingness to take up settlements and divestitures.”

The agencies already seem to be focusing on more tailored actions, rather than broadly opposing transactions, said Beth Vessel, a healthcare attorney at law firm Holland & Knight who focuses on transactions and antitrust law.
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Government needs to provide healthcare. It is a national need.
 
Make being ill ilegal.
Surely then only criminals will get ill and who cares about them?

I'll take my Nobel Prizes now please!
 
How Trump could fast-track healthcare mergers?

If they bribe him.
 
Peacenik said:
Government needs to provide healthcare. It is a national need.
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About half of all healthcare spending in the US already comes from the government. Do you seriously think this horrid system will improve once the state takes over the other half too?
 
If the Republicans do too much damage, maybe we'll have to skip straight to an American NHS.
 
aociswundumho said:
About half of all healthcare spending in the US already comes from the government. Do you seriously think this horrid system will improve once the state takes over the other half too?
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Not unless we get the corruption out of government, another improvement this nation needs. It should be noted the procedures medicare pays for are among the lowest cost compared to for-profit insurance, which has an automatic 20% built-in profit where medicare only adds 3% for overhead.
 
Peacenik said:
We need to pass the American Anti Corruption Act.

One way to tell the need for this is the fact that Congress won't even bring it up for discussion. It shows they are mostly on the take; and also demonstrates the need for the Act.
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You're not going to legislate self-interest out of politics.
 
aociswundumho said:
You're not going to legislate self-interest out of politics.
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Legislators will do what their voters want them to if elected on the Anti-Corruption platform.
 
aociswundumho said:
About half of all healthcare spending in the US already comes from the government. Do you seriously think this horrid system will improve once the state takes over the other half too?
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Somehow our European cousins pay less and are healthier with government health care.
 
aociswundumho said:
About half of all healthcare spending in the US already comes from the government. Do you seriously think this horrid system will improve once the state takes over the other half too?
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Single payer systems provide better care at a fraction of the cost of the US system. This is because healthcare doesn’t, because it can’t, operate under free market principles.
 
aociswundumho said:
If that were true, medical tourism wouldn't be a thing.
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It’s demonstrably true. Medical tourism works both ways. People from the US travel abroad for healthcare because they can’t afford it here.

We know empirically for profit systems don’t work, because healthcare doesn’t, because it can’t, function under free market principles.
 
rahl said:
It’s demonstrably true. Medical tourism works both ways. People from the US travel abroad for healthcare because they can’t afford it here.
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Exactly - people who need healthcare are shopping the world based on price and quality, i.e. market principles.

rahl said:
We know empirically for profit systems don’t work, because healthcare doesn’t, because it can’t, function under free market principles.
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Do you support removing the profit motive entirely from healthcare?
 
aociswundumho said:
Exactly - people who need healthcare are shopping the world based on price and quality, i.e. market principles.
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No. They are leaving the abysmal US system for the universal/single payer systems which are proven superior to the US.
aociswundumho said:
Do you support removing the profit motive entirely from healthcare?
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Of course. Because healthcare isn’t a commodity and doesn’t, because it can’t, function as a free market product. Which is why every other nation with single payer provided superior care at a fraction of the cost we pay.
 
rahl said:
No. They are leaving the abysmal US system for the universal/single payer systems which are proven superior to the US.
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No, when you travel to another country for medical services, you pay cash - just like any other market.

rahl said:
Of course. Because healthcare isn’t a commodity and doesn’t, because it can’t, function as a free market product. Which is why every other nation with single payer provided superior care at a fraction of the cost we pay.
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Then why does every single country with universal healthcare have a two-tiered system? Why does every one of them allow private, for-profit healthcare businesses to exist?
 
aociswundumho said:
No, when you travel to another country for medical services, you pay cash - just like any other market.
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Nope. When you go to Canada, the UK etc, you don’t pay a dime.
aociswundumho said:
Then why does every single country with universal healthcare have a two-tiered system?
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How do you imagine this helps your refuted position?
aociswundumho said:
Why does every one of them allow private, for-profit healthcare businesses to exist?
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Choice. Nothing wrong with choice. It’s just an empirical fact single payer systems are superior to the US system. As they provide better care at a fraction of our cost.

I know it sucks for you libertarians when your ideology is confronted with reality.
 
Peacenik said:
Government needs to provide healthcare. It is a national need.
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There’s a difference between buying it and providing it. Unless the government actually were to step in and provide services ala a National Health Service, relaxing antitrust oversight of provider markets will have consequences.
 
aociswundumho said:
About half of all healthcare spending in the US already comes from the government. Do you seriously think this horrid system will improve once the state takes over the other half too?
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The problem are individuals like you. Really, the 'horrid' system won't improve until Americans decide to grow up and start holding themselves to a higher-standard.
 
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