DOJ is ‘upping its game,’ with new task force to tackle health care monopolies

The U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust chief said Thursday that his division will be “upping our game” with a new task force dedicated to tackling health care monopolies and collusion.

“Every year, Americans spend trillions of dollars on health care, money that is increasingly being gobbled up by a small number of payers, providers and dominant intermediaries that have consolidated their way to power in communities across the country,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Jonathan Kanter said in a statement. ”[T]he task force will identify and root out monopolies and collusive practices that increase costs, decrease quality and create single points of failure in the health care industry.”

The department said the Task Force on Health Care Monopolies and Collusion will closely examine competition concerns throughout the health care industry, from patients to entrepreneurs. It will also consider issues such as serial acquisitions, the labor market and quality of care.

The task force will be led by Katrina Rouse, an antitrust prosecutor in the division since 2011.

“The purpose of this task force is to ensure that we are taking a whole of division approach as well as a whole of government approach to ensure that we hold monopolies and bad actors accountable for violations of the antitrust laws in the health care space,” Kanter said Thursday on Washington Post Live.

Kanter called the health care industry a large platform that coordinates with various business sectors such as providers, pharmacy benefit managers, claim processing and banks.

“These are multisided giants that are accumulating assets at an alarming rate and are becoming the new intermediaries and gatekeepers of our health care system,” Kanter said.

“It’s really important that we adjust to market realities and make sure that we have not only the resources devoted to addressing these concerns, but have the expertise devoted,” he added. “Today’s announcement essentially explains that we are upping our game. We are going to elevate the importance of health care antitrust enforcement.”

Attorney Melissa Maxman, who focuses on antitrust and represents smaller companies in technology and health care, said her clients are “generally excited” to see the DOJ’s new task force.

“A task force on monopolies and collusion in the health care world is not substantive; it’s procedural,” said Maxman, a partner at Cohen & Gresser.

“But there are a lot of smaller companies that are going to say, ‘Finally, we’re not going to be stuck with the same rules they apply to Amazon,’” she added. “Task forces sometimes can be inefficient. But if ever there were a need for one, it would be in health care competition.”

Antitrust attorney Bradley Weber, a partner at Locke Lord, said the department has created task forces before to concentrate on specific industries.

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“The DOJ likes to find parts of the economy or parts of industry where they have concerns about competition and then create these task forces,” Weber said.

Weber cited the department’s recent concern about algorithmic pricing, where artificial intelligence is used to help pricing decisions. Private lawsuits have been brought in New York and Chicago against Multiplan, a company that uses AI to help health care issuers price out-of-network health claims.

“That will be one of their missions, I think, in this new health care task force: to look at algorithmic pricing in the health care industry,” Weber said, adding that politics might be at play.

“There are definitely political overtones where President Biden and the DOJ want to show that they’re trying to control health care costs,” he added. “And to the extent those are high because of a lack of competition among both insurers and health care providers, then this is at least some visible indication that they are trying to crack down on that.”