Doug Hastings, Chair of the firm's Board of Directors and Member of the Health Care and Life Sciences practice, in the Washington, DC, office, was quoted in an article titled "Care Coordination May Lead to Less Competition, Higher Prices, Article Says."

Following is an excerpt:

Better medical care may arise from new public policies to promote more coordination from hospitals, doctors and others in healthcare, but there may be a high price to pay, two economists cautioned in a new article.

More coordination may lead to less competition and greater leverage for hospitals and doctors to raise prices, wrote Katherine Baicker of Harvard University and Helen Levy of the University of Michigan, in a New England Journal of Medicine essay that outlines the tension and risks associated with growth of new healthcare payment models. ...

Douglas Hastings, a healthcare antitrust attorney with Epstein Becker and Green, said the University of Michigan economists correctly noted that it's not clear what may be the best combination of coordination and competition.

"We need to evaluate the net effect of the suite of new public and private insurance-market policies on both price and quantity?...," Baicker and Levy wrote.

Hastings cited a recent Brookings Institution report that called for the use of cost and quality data in antitrust enforcement. That data could help inform how well networks or mergers serve the goals of improved care at a lower cost.

Jump to Page

Privacy Preference Center

When you visit any website, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. This information might be about you, your preferences or your device and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to. The information does not usually directly identify you, but it can give you a more personalized web experience. Because we respect your right to privacy, you can choose not to allow some types of cookies. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings. However, blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information.

Performance Cookies

These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.