More on Executive Pay: Healthcare Non-Profits Are Paying More & More to CEOs
Anne Marie Helm, Managing Editor August 12, 2015
Just after we wrote last week about the SEC’s new pay ratio disclosure rule under Dodd-Frank, Modern Healthcare published a story on executive pay in not-for-profit healthcare entities that we want to draw your attention to. State laws governing non-profits provide a check on CEO salaries by requiring that those salaries be “market rates,” and attempting to ensure that they do not amount to misuses of the entities’ charitable assets. Notwithstanding, Modern Healthcare’s review of recent non-profit healthcare executives’ pay shows an increase of 29.6% in pay for the 20 …
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The SEC’s New Equation: CEO Pay Divided by Average Employee’s Pay = Good Policy
Anne Marie Helm, Managing Editor August 6, 2015
The topic of executive pay has been central to discussions of wealth disparity in America, and the healthcare industry is certainly not exempt. Amid the large number of hospitals who claim non-profit status are a great number of publicly-traded healthcare firms for whom the chickens may be coming home to roost come January 2017 (and let’s not forget about Big Pharma). At last, the SEC has passed a rule under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, which passed a range of financial reforms not specific to healthcare, that will require firms …
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Update: Daughters of Charity Gets $250M to Stay Afloat
Anne Marie Helm, Managing Editor July 17, 2015
Update (July 17, 2015): The Daughters of Charity hospitals, which sought purchasers due to financial hardship earlier this year, only to be impeded by the California AG, whose onerous conditions were the death knell to Prime’s proposed acquisition, have secured some help in the form of a $250 million capital injection, according to early reports. Private equity firm BlueMountain Capital Management will provide the investment. See below for our earlier posts on the Daughters situation: Update (March 10, 2015): Today Prime announced that it would not go forward with its proposed …
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CPR & HCI3 Release State Price Transparency Report Card with Appendix by The Source
Anne Marie Helm, Managing Editor July 8, 2015
Catalyst for Payment Reform (CPR) and the Health Care Incentives Improvement Group (HCI3) just released the third edition of the Report Card on State Price Transparency Laws. The report highlights the five states that received non-failing grades, all of which received different grades from 2014: New Hampshire (A), Colorado (B), Maine (B), Vermont (C) and Virginia (C). A key feature of the report is Appendix I: An Analysis of Popular Legal Arguments Against Price Transparency, authored by The Source’s editors, Jaime S. King and Anne Marie Helm. We thank CPR and HCI3 …
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Federal Merger Enforcement Timeline
Anne Marie Helm, Managing Editor July 6, 2015
4-28-17: 2nd Circuit affirms District Court Decision to Block Anthem-Cigna Merger On April 28, 2017, a divided panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the US District Court’s decision that sided with the Department of Justice (DOJ), which argued that the proposed merger violated Section 7 of the Clayton Antitrust Act. Anthem Inc. announced on May 12, 2017 that it would no longer seek to acquire Cigna Corporation. 2-08-17: District Court Blocks Anthem-Cigna Merger On February 8, 2017, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia blocked the proposed merger between …
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Michigan Hospitals Settle with DOJ/State AG Over Scheme Not to Compete
Anne Marie Helm, Managing Editor July 1, 2015
At the end of last month, the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department and the Michigan Attorney General’s Office filed a civil complaint against four Michigan hospitals, alleging the providers had agreed not to compete with one another in violation of Sherman Act §1 and Michigan state law. DOJ and the Michigan AGO filed a proposed settlement (in the form of a proposed final judgment) simultaneously with that complaint, which means that the parties had reached a settlement before either document was filed. This is common practice for the government …
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Is M&A for Insurers Bad? Ask the Blue Cross Plaintiffs.
Anne Marie Helm, Managing Editor June 25, 2015
The focus of most antitrust concerns in healthcare over the past few years has been provider consolidation and provider market power. But, lately all eyes appear to be on insurers, who, as The Source tweeted on June 16 and the Wall Street Journal echoed three days later, followed by CNBC yesterday, seem to have caught merger fever (ok, we said “consolidation fever,” and we said that they seemed to have caught it from the providers, whereas they didn’t trace the fever’s origin). As the five largest insurers, United Health, Cigna, …
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Health Affairs Study Lists the 50 U.S. Hospitals with Biggest Mark-Ups
Anne Marie Helm, Managing Editor June 9, 2015
Health Affairs just published a study that used Medicare data from 2012 to identify the 50 U.S. hospitals with the highest charge-to-cost ratios. The Washington Post published an excellent breakdown of the academic piece, complete with graphics. The study showed that all but one of the 50 were for-profit hospitals, and 20 were in Florida.
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Update on 9th Circuit Appeal of Antitrust Case Against Sutter
Anne Marie Helm, Managing Editor June 8, 2015
June 2015 Update: Since our last post on this case, Sutter filed its answering brief, and the plaintiffs filed their reply in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. As timing would have it, between the answering brief and the reply, the Ninth Circuit decided the St. Luke’s appeal, another case that focused on geographic market definition in a healthcare market, in February of this year (see our blog post on that case). Accordingly, the Sidibe plaintiffs relied heavily on St. Luke’s in their reply brief to argue for a market definition …
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St. Luke’s Request for Rehearing Denied
Anne Marie Helm, Managing Editor April 7, 2015
UPDATE: April 21, 2015 The Ninth Circuit announced on April 21 that St. Luke’s petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc were being denied after a vote of the judges. It remains to be seen whether the case will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. UPDATE, April 7, 2015 Late last month, St. Luke’s and Saltzer filed a combined petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc with the Ninth Circuit. The providers took issue with the appellate court’s handling of the efficiencies defense, geographic markets analysis, and what they call “the …
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