Overview
Jeffrey Brennan said a Third Circuit decision upholding the FTC’s challenge to a Pennsylvania hospital merger “largely affirms the FTC’s method for defining geographic markets in hospital merger cases.” Mr. Brennan said the court agreed with the FTC’s contention “that patients generally prefer care close to home and won’t accept networks that exclude the local hospitals. This can often lead, as it did in this case, to more narrow and concentrated markets, and potentially a higher risk of anticompetitive effects from a merger.”