On June 13, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed a preliminary injunction granted to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and North Dakota Attorney General (NDAG) blocking the proposed acquisition of Mid-Dakota Clinic, P.C. (MDC) – a multispecialty physician group in North Dakota – by Sanford Health, a large South Dakota-based health system (Sanford). This decision may foreclose continued pursuit of MDC by Sanford, and represents another success for the FTC in challenging health care consolidation (see our previous analysis of the granting of the injunction …
Archives: Antitrust
Subscribe to Antitrust RSS FeedConnecticut Legislature Operationalizes New Health Oversight Agency: The Office of Health Strategy
On May 14, 2018, Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy signed into law Public Act No. 18-91 “An Act Concerning the Office of Health Strategy” (PA 18-91), a bill that operationalizes the Office of Health Strategy (OHS), a new health oversight agency in Connecticut. OHS is a division of the Department of Public Health (DPH) “for administrative purposes only” that was provisionally established by the Connecticut General Assembly within the budget implementer bill passed in a special session in late 2017 and accorded responsibility for developing and implementing a …
FTC Intervenes in Physician Practice Acquisition in North Dakota
On June 22, 2017 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed an administrative complaint and a request for a preliminary injunction in federal court to block a proposed physician practice acquisition in North Dakota (the Transaction), the agency’s latest intervention in opposition to consolidation at the physician practice level. In this case, the FTC (accompanied by the Attorney General of North Dakota) opposes a proposed acquisition of Mid Dakota Clinic, P.C. (MDC) by Sanford Bismarck (a subsidiary of multi-state health system Sanford Health, collectively Sanford) on the grounds that the Transaction, …
Anthem Terminates Cigna Merger Following D.C. Circuit Setback
On May 12, 2017, Anthem Inc. announced that it had terminated its merger agreement with Cigna Corporation, a deal that would have united the second and third largest sellers of health insurance to large companies in the country. Anthem’s termination of the merger came two weeks to the day after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected Anthem’s appeal of an injunction blocking the merger issued by a U.S. District Court earlier this year. Anthem terminated the merger one week after filing a petition for a writ …
Court Rejects Health Care System’s Efforts to Dismiss Government’s Anti-Steering Managed Care Antitrust Case
On March 30, 2017, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina rejected a motion for judgment on the pleadings (akin to a motion to dismiss) by Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS) in a novel health care antitrust suit brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and State of North Carolina (collectively, the Government).
The Government filed suit against CHS, a health system consisting of 10 hospitals in and around Charlotte, North Carolina, in June 2016, alleging that contractual provisions mandated by CHS in its contracts with health …
