Antitrust and Competition in Health Care Markets

In this paper we review issues relating to antitrust and competition in health care markets. The paper begins with a brief review of antitrust legislation. We then discuss whether and how health care is different from other industries in ways that might affect the optimality of competition. The paper then focuses on the main areas in which antitrust has been applied to health care: hospital mergers, monopsony, and foreclosure. In each of these sections we review the relevant antitrust cases, discuss the issues that have arisen in those cases, and then review the relevant economics literature and suggest some new methods for analyzing these issues.