Private equity investment in health care across the country has continued to garner the attention of health policy researchers and policymakers in recent years. Stakeholders are concerned that private equity ownership of physician practices prioritizes profit over patient care quality. Despite concerns of potential impacts on price and quality arising from  these private equity transactions in the health care industry, few enforcement actions have occurred. Last month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took the lead in challenging one of these arrangements, suing a private equity firm retroactively in federal court …

On September 18, The Source on Healthcare Price and Competition, together with UC Berkeley’s Petris Center, submitted public comments on the Federal Draft Merger Guidelines published on July 19. Jointly released by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ), the draft guidelines proposed new considerations and guidance in the antitrust review of mergers and acquisitions, taking into account new developments and market realities in recent years. These new guidelines would replace the horizontal merger guidelines of 2010 and vertical merger guidelines of 2020 which have been withdrawn by …