Dive Brief:
- A federal appeals court has supported the FTC's challenge of and paused the proposed merger between Advocate Health Care and NorthShore University HealthSystem, Modern Healthcare reported.
- The 7th Circuit court called a lower court's decision to allow the proposed merger between the two Illinois health systems “erroneously flawed.”
- FTC has been in a battle over the merger arguing the deal could hurt both patients and insurers and result in higher medical costs. The health systems have been sparring with the FTC over much of the year around how their market should be defined to consider the regional impact. The merger will be reevaluated by a federal district Chicago court.
Dive Insight:
The news is underscored by a recent JAMA Forum discussion that thrust focus onto the issue of how the next administration should go about ensuring marketplace competition in the face of growing concerns around the endurability of the policies of the ACA.
The increasing difficulties in the marketplace this year, marked by insurer withdrawals and major rate increases, are significantly attributable to the market power being wielded by hospitals and health systems, argues a new commentary by Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH, of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and an internist at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System.
The future viability of the Affordable Care Act may rest on the federal government's ability to monitor and regulate healthcare industry consolidation among practices, hospitals, and hospital systems, Jha suggests.
However, by Jha's reasoning, while some consolidations can indeed fulfill those intentions, many others have little to do with real integration and simply give the systems more power. That suggests more attention should be given to how the FTC is impacting factors around regulation.
"If the ACA is to thrive under the next president, he or she must ensure that we have a dynamic healthcare marketplace," Jha wrote. "For that reason alone, the ability of the ACA to fulfill its promise of greater access at an affordable price will depend as much on the effectiveness of the FTC as it will on the effectiveness of the CMS."