On February 24 and 25, 2015, the FTC and DOJ will host the second public workshop in their series entitled, "Examining Health Care Competition." As discussed further in an Alert from Bruce Sokler and Farrah Short in our Antitrust practice, the upcoming workshop will look at the potential competitive impact from changes in the way health care services and products are delivered and reimbursed. The first workshop in this series, held in March 2014, explored trends and innovation in the health care industry that may affect competition. Since the first workshop, the FTC has secured several high-profile health care antitrust wins and staked out in a number of speeches an aggressive enforcement position in which antitrust should not give way to other health care policies. There has been no suggestion that the DOJ's enforcement views vary from the FTC on these issues. Industry stakeholders in the health care antitrust enforcement debate are likely to utilize the upcoming workshop to advocate a range of conflicting policy positions and empirical support. The agencies invite public comments on a number of issues in advance of and following the workshop.
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