Anti-Competitive Practices Hurt American Patients

“...While the issuance of robust and reliable patents to incentivize pharmaceutical innovations is critical, our patent system must not be used to unjustifiably delay generic drugs and biosimilar competition beyond that reasonably contemplated by law.”

“The bigger the hospital market share, the more market power, the higher the prices.”

“Too many hospital mergers lead to jacked up prices and diminished care for patients most in need... The Court has hit pause on this merger, which the FTC alleges is unlawful. Hospital executives hatching merger plans should take note.”

Health systems with a lot of market power are likely to have the highest prices and thus the most incentive to keep those prices secret,” Desai said. “There is this tension between the push for price transparency and just the fact that there are fewer and fewer actual choices for patients.”

“Improving the competitive landscape for biologic drugs is far from impossible,” according to Avik Roy and Gregg Girvan of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP). “A responsible agenda to rein in excessively lengthy biotechnology monopolies would increase innovation, because it would motivate companies to develop new medicines, instead of relying on price increases on older medicines to generate returns for shareholders.”

“People generally do not have the ability to choose when, where, or what health care services they ‘purchase,’ and this can create perverse incentives for entities like [private equity] firms and their investors who are primarily driven by profits. Given the significant impact of [private equity]’s increasing involvement in the health care industry, policymakers will need to take further steps to protect patients and control rising health care costs.”

“The problem with less competition in markets today means that consumers have fewer choices and they’re paying more for health care. Think about a hospital system that is just one in an area. If you had two, three, four that were competing for the business of treating patients, it would force hospitals to compete not just on price, but on quality, and make sure that at the end of the day costs were lower. We know that that would benefit patients and other people that are paying for health care.”