The White House. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM
The Trump administration's antitrust lawyers in the Justice Department are siding with the health care providers in the big dispute over health insurers' use of automated systems to determine reimbursement rates for out-of-network care.
Hospitals, physicians, group medical practices and other plaintiffs have filed a wave of federal court suits accusing MultiPlan, a company that manages health care provider networks, of violating federal antitrust law by using computers and decision-making algorithms to hold down the prices paid for out-of-network care in what the plaintiffs say is an unfair way.
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MultiPlan has emphasized that it's doing its best to control health care costs for employer plan sponsors, plan participants and insurers, and that it believes that the providers are angry about its successful efforts to use public data to keep providers from overcharging out-of-network patients.
Related: MultiPlan responds to lawsuits, says providers want to increase health care prices
The federal courts have consolidated pretrial proceedings for the cases in a "multidistrict litigation" process, or MDL, at the U.S. District Court for the U.S. Northern District of Illinois
Health care providers filed the suits when Joe Biden was president. Now that Donald Trump is president, U.S. Department of Justice antitrust lawyers could have stayed out of the litigation, or they could have backed MultiPlan.
Instead, Abigail Slater, an assistant attorney general, and other antitrust division lawyers have filed a document — a "statement of interest of the United States" — supporting the providers.
"Competitors' use of algorithmic technologies to coordinate their decision-making poses a growing threat to the free market competition on which our economic system is premised," according to the new filing. "The United States therefore has a strong interest in the correct application of the antitrust laws to claims alleging algorithmic collusion and information exchange."
Slater's team emphasizes that it could make similar arguments in connection with other matters.
"The United States also remains committed to enforcing the antitrust laws against unlawful exchanges of competitively sensitive information that take place through and alongside new technologies and is currently litigating two civil cases challenging information-sharing agreements," according to the filing.
What it means: The Trump administration may be tough on companies' efforts to use artificial intelligence or other forms of technology in ways that seem to conflict with federal antitrust laws.
The new filing could also be a sign that the Trump administration and many Republicans in Congress will be skeptical about health plan and health insurer to use their size to increase their bargaining power with health care providers.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., noted in a public letter she sent to Elon Musk, a presidential advisor working at Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, that many Republicans have supported vigorous enforcement of federal antitrust laws in health care.
Abigail Slater: Slater was nominated to her post by Trump. She worked from 2004 through 2014 as an attorney at the Federal Trade Commission, then served for more than a year, from 2018 through 2019, as a special assistant to the president during Trump's first term as president. From 2024 through 2025, she worked on economic policy for JD Vance. Vance then was a U.S. senator and now is the vice president.
Plaintiffs' statement: Christopher Seeger, the court-appointed plaintiffs' coordinating counsel in the MultiPlan litigation, said in a statement that the Justice Department's statement of interest validates the plaintiffs case against MultiPlan and the insurers that use MultiPlan claim repricing services.
The interest statement affirms "that competitors' coordinating pricing through any methods and sharing information through third-party intermediaries constitute antitrust violations," Seeger said. "The practical impact of this health care pricing cartel is devastating to the providers our communities rely on. Nearly 30% of rural hospitals are at risk of closure, and thousands of doctors whose practices depend on out-of-network payments are teetering on the edge of financial collapse."
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
