MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

Another policy issue that could be at stake for healthcare providers this fall is antitrust enforcement.

The Democratic platform calls for retroactive review of some of the mergers and acquisitions that took place during the Trump administration, including those in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.

Biden says his administration would aggressively use antitrust authority to tackle market consolidation in healthcare and scrutinize future acquisitions based on impacts on labor markets, low-income communities and racial equity in addition to prices and competition.

“In regards to ability to get a deal completed, with the way they have talked about antitrust, for sure the lens the Biden administration would view market concentration with will make it significantly more difficult to get certain deals completed,” said Michael Strazzella, federal government relations practice group leader at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney.

However, states still have significant discretion over which deals are approved. For example, vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) had a history of cracking down on healthcare mergers during her time as California’s attorney general. Dale Webber, an attorney at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, said it’s important not to overlook states’ roles, and that many healthcare mergers have happened in states with Democratic attorneys general.

The Trump administration has also been tough on some healthcare mergers, and forced DaVita, Bristol-Myers Squibb and CVS to make divestitures to get their acquisition deals approved.

However, healthcare antitrust experts were disappointed with the Trump administration’s vertical merger guidelines, which were rolled out this summer. The 14-page document suggests federal regulators will generally view vertical mergers as pro-competitive, even though there’s little proof they improve competition and considerable evidence to the contrary.