Our August 5, 2021 Health Care Update focused on President Biden's Executive Order that addressed consolidation in the United States and touched on the health care industry. Not much has been done since the President executed that Executive Order in July 2021. Recently, however, on October 25, 2021, the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") released a statement announcing the rescission of the 1995 Policy Statement on Prior Approval and Notice Provision (the "1995 Statement"). The rescission of the 1995 Statement acts to restore the FTC's practice of requiring companies that previously pursued an anticompetitive merger to get prior approval for any future transaction "affecting each relevant market for which a violation was alleged" for at least ten years. The prior approval provision is aimed at deterring parties from pursuing facially anticompetitive deals, which serves to preserve FTC resources by decreasing the amount of litigation over anticompetitive mergers. Whether the rescission of the 1995 Statement will have a meaningful impact remains to be seen.
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