Elisabeth Rosenthal: With patients’ bills out of control, price regulations may be on the horizon.
to be more aggressive about hospital mergers and even to review those that had already occurred. But it is unclear if the agency has the tools to do much. “Regulators are 10 to 15 years behind and don’t have the resources — so that’s where we are,” said James Capretta, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
With its staff of about 40 focused on hospitals, the F.T.C. has prevented seven mergers in the past two years, said Rahul Rao, the deputy director of the agency’s bureau of competition, who called the problem a “top priority.” But there were 53 hospital mergers and acquisitions in 2022 and have been more than 90 per year in“Its job is like shooting fish in a barrel.
The F.T.C. has an even harder time evaluating the vertical merger, which is far more common: when a big hospital system buys up a much smaller hospital or some doctors’ practices and independent surgery or radiology centers — or when it merges with a local insurer.
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