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    May 29, 2014

    A free, half-day symposium for anyone who would like to better understand the current and future roles that antitrust policy can play in our changing health care markets.

    A half-day event with nationally recognized experts on antitrust law and health policy intended to make this traditional tool of economic policy intelligible to the health policy community. Panels will focus on the utility of antitrust law to counter the pricing power of physicians and hospitals and the implications of fairly new entities known as Accountable Care Organizations for competitive markets. Panels will address the ability of antitrust law to both prevent the development of uncompetitive markets and to offer effective remedies in the case of past consolidations by either hospitals, physicians or other providers.

    1:30 PM  Welcome

    G. William Hoagland, Study Panel Co-Chair and Senior Vice President, The Bipartisan Policy Center

     

    1:40 PM  Antitrust and Why it Matters for Competitive Markets?

    Keynoter: Barak D. Richman, Bartlett Professor of Law and Business Administration, Duke University.

    An overview of trends in recent hospital consolidation, the impact on pricing and a history of past efforts at antitrust enforcement in health care including problems in using antitrust law to address the lack of competitive markets once a merger has occurred.

     

    2:00 PM  Conventional Antitrust Policy: Application to Today’s Health Systems

    A discussion of the development of multi-hospital systems spanning geographic markets, the use of “all or nothing” bargaining and other contracting strategies, and the effectiveness of current regulatory/legislative remedies for extant monopolies.

    Moderator: Paul Ginsburg, Norman Topping Chair in Medicine and Public Policy, University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy

    Discussants:

    • William E. Kramer, Executive Director for National Health Policy, Pacific Business Group on Health
    • Keith B. Pitts, Vice Chairman, Tenet Healthcare Corporation
    • Ronald Levy, Executive in Residence, Health Management and Policy, Saint Louis University College of Public Health and Social Justice
    • Barak D. Richman, Bartlett Professor of Law and Business Administration, Duke University
    • Robert F. Leibenluft, Partner, Hogan Lovells LLP

     

    3:20 PM Break

     

    3:30 PM The Future of Antitrust: Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs)

    The discussion of the development of ACOs in preserving or even expanding competition and more broadly the role of antitrust in using risk-based payment to affect competitive markets and the exercise of market power.

    Moderator: James C. Robinson, Leonard D. Schaeffer Professor of Health Economics, University of California, Berkeley

    Discussants:

    • James Roosevelt, Jr., Chief Executive Officer, Tufts Health Plan
    • Nicholas Wolter, Chief Executive Officer, Billings Clinic
    • Robert Berenson, Institute Fellow, Urban Institute
    • Robert Leibenluft,  Partner. Hogan Lovells US LLP
    • Cory Capps, Economist, Bates White Consulting

     

    4:50 PM  Wrap-Up

    Robert Berenson, Study Panel Co-Chair and Institute Fellow, Urban Institute

    Financial support for this project is provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The California Health Care Foundation, based in Oakland, California, and the Jayne Koskinas Ted Giovanis Foundation for Health and Policy.