Distinguished Fellow and Advisory Board Member Tim Greaney was quoted in the 9/24/2020 Wall Street Journal article “Blue Health Insurers Reach Tentative Antitrust Settlement for $2.7 Billion“:

Under the tentative settlement, the Blue insurers would drop a rule that limits the share of each company’s total national revenue that can come from business that isn’t under Blue brands. That change could increase competition among the companies if they choose to expand their non-Blue lines of business in one another’s geographies, experts said.

The tentative settlement would also loosen a rule that had limited the Blue insurers’ ability to compete with one another for the business of large national employers.

“They are removing two of the mechanisms that are pretty flatly anticompetitive,” said Tim Greaney, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. Still, he said, the Blues’ licensing setup—the main focus of the litigation—would continue to limit direct competition among the insurers.