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The Double-Edged Sword of Health Care Integration:
Consolidation and Cost Control
*
ERIN C. FUSE BROWN AND JAIME S. KING
†
The average family of four in the United States spends $25,826 per year on health
care. American health care costs so much because we both overuse and overpay
for health care goods and services. The Affordable Care Act’s cost control policies
focus on curbing overutilization by encouraging health care providers to integrate
to promote efficiency and eliminate waste, but the cost control policies largely
ignore prices. This article examines this overlooked half of health care cost control
policy: rising prices and the policy levers held by the states to address them. We
challenge the conventional wisdom that reducing overutilization through health
care integration will effectively reduce health spending. We argue that vertical
integration—bringing together disparate providers from hospitals to physicians—is
a double-edged sword, with not only the potential to reduce wasteful and
unnecessary use of services but also downside risks of increasing market
consolidation and health care prices. Due to already highly concentrated health
care markets and the limits of federal antitrust enforcement of vertical health care
integration, states have both an opportunity and an obligation to supplement
federal antitrust efforts to control rising health care prices stemming from health
care integration. The way to manage the double-edged sword of health care
integration is to require price and quality oversight to avoid harm to competition.
We offer a menu of six policy initiatives for states to choose from, ranging from
data collection to rate regulation. If we are to control our personal and national
health care spending, states have a critical role to play in overseeing health care
integration and private health care price increases.
INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................ 56
I. THE RISE OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION........................................................... 61
A. THEORETICAL BENEFITS OF VERTICAL INTEGRATION ............................... 61
B. POLICY INCENTIVES FOR VERTICAL INTEGRATION .................................... 63
II. THE DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF VERTICAL HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION ......... 68
* Copyright © 2016 Erin C. Fuse Brown and Jaime S. King.
† Erin C. Fuse Brown is an Assistant Professor of Law, Georgia State University
College of Law; Faculty Member, Georgia State University Center of Law, Health &
Society. Jaime S. King is a Professor of Law, UC Hastings College of Law; Co-Director,
UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy; Executive Editor, The
Source on HealthCare Price & Competition. The authors would like to thank Robert
Berenson, I. Glenn Cohen, John Cogan, Abbe Gluck, Thomas Greaney, Henry Greely, Mark
Hall, Barak Richman, Rachel Sachs, and David Studdert for their insightful and helpful
comments, and E. Hardin Patrick and Michael Montgomery for their excellent research
assistance. We also thank the numerous commenters from presentations of this paper at
Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and
Bioethics, Yale Law School’s Solomon Center for Health Policy and Law, Stanford Law
School’s Center for Law and the Biosciences, and the National Academy for State Health
Policy.
56 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
A. INCREASED MARKET POWER .................................................................... 68
B. INCREASES IN REFERRALS AND REIMBURSEMENT ..................................... 72
C. AGENCY PROBLEMS AND CONSUMER CHOICE .......................................... 74
III. THE CENTRAL ROLE OF STATES ........................................................................ 76
IV. STATE OPTIONS TO ADDRESS THE DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD ............................. 78
A. ALL-PAYER CLAIMS DATABASES ............................................................. 79
B. ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT AND IMMUNITY .............................................. 82
1. ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT .............................................................. 83
2. STATE ACTION IMMUNITY AND CERTIFICATES OF PUBLIC
ADVANTAGE ........................................................................................ 91
C. ACO CERTIFICATION ................................................................................ 94
D. RATE OVERSIGHT AUTHORITY .................................................................. 96
1. RATE OVERSIGHT COMMISSION ....................................................... 97
2. INSURANCE RATE REVIEW ............................................................... 98
E. PRIVATE RATE CAPS ............................................................................... 102
F. PROVIDER RATE REGULATION ................................................................. 104
1. ALL-PAYER RATE SETTING ............................................................ 104
2. PRIVATE RATE REGULATION .......................................................... 106
3. GLOBAL BUDGETS .......................................................................... 107
CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 111
INTRODUCTION
It is no secret that U.S. health care costs are out of control. The United States
has experienced a more than 400% increase in total annual health care expenditures
since 1990,
1
exceeding $3 trillion and representing 17.5% of gross domestic
product (GDP) in 2014 alone.
2
The average family of four spends $25,826 on
health care per year, an amount that could buy the family a new Toyota Prius or
Tacoma every year.
3
Yet while we pay more per capita than any other nation for
1
. See CTRS. FOR DISEASE CONTROL & PREVENTION, GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT,
NATIONAL HEALTH EXPENDITURES, PER CAPITA AMOUNTS, PERCENT DISTRIBUTION, AND
AVERAGE ANNUAL PERCENT CHANGE: UNITED STATES, SELECTED YEARS 1960–2013, tbl.102
(2014), http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2014/102.pdf [https://perma.cc/G4T8-UR67].
2
. CTRS. FOR MEDICARE & MEDICAID SERVS., NATIONAL HEALTH EXPENDITURES 2014
HIGHLIGHTS, https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports
/NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/highlights.pdf [https://perma.cc/V2NC-X226].
3
. CHRIS GIROD, SUE HART & SCOTT WELTZ, 2016 MILLIMAN MEDICAL INDEX 3 (May
2016), http://us.milliman.com/uploadedFiles/insight/Periodicals/mmi/2016-milliman-
medical
-index.pdf [https://perma.cc/7XYA-S834] (“[O]f the typical family of four’s $25,826 in total
[health care] spending, . . . the employer pays 57% of costs, or $14,793, while the employee
pays the other 43%: $6,717 in employee contributions through payroll deduction and $4,316
in the form of out-of-pocket expenses incurred at time of service.”); see TOYOTA,
http://www.toyota.com/#!/hybrids-ev [https://perma.cc/8RX2-6D5N] (listing the starting
price for a 2016 Prius as $19,560) TOYOTA, http://www.toyota.com/#!/trucks
[https://perma.cc/KL37-YC59] (listing the starting price for a 2017 Tacoma as $24,120).
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 57
health care, the health of American citizens does not reflect this additional
spending.
In the lead-up to the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Atul Gawande
laid out what has become the dominant narrative of U.S. health care cost
containment in his highly influential New Yorker article, The Cost Conundrum.
4
The narrative was this: Medicare health care expenditures vary widely throughout
the country in ways that cannot be explained by the sickness of the patient
population, the quality of care provided, or even the cost of producing the health
care. The most expensive regions in the country have higher health care utilization,
and for that extra utilization, they produce neither better quality care nor better
patient health outcomes. In fact, leading researchers estimate that the federal
government could eliminate nearly 30% of Medicare spending without sacrificing
quality or outcomes if higher-spending regions mirrored the utilization patterns of
lower-spending regions.
5
Following this logic, Dr. Gawande and several leading
health economists argued that to bend the cost curve, the U.S. health care system
needed to realign its payment and delivery systems to disincentivize and reduce
overutilization, and to instead reward coordination, quality, and efficiency.
6
Gawande’s account was so compelling that it became required reading in President
Obama’s White House and Capitol Hill in the months leading up to the passage of
the ACA, heavily influencing the translation of cost control policies into law.
7
As a result, the cost containment mechanisms of the ACA and other recent
health care reform efforts focus heavily on reducing overutilization.
8
To do so,
federal policy incentivizes vertical integration among providers at different phases
of health care delivery to improve care coordination, eliminate wasteful or
4
. Atul Gawande, The Cost Conundrum, NEW YORKER (June 1, 2009), http://www
.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/06/01/the-cost-conundrum [https://perma.cc/5JHY-4WV4].
5
. Id.; see also John E. Wennberg, Elliot S. Fisher & Jonathan S. Skinner, Geography
and the Debate over Medicare Reform, HEALTH AFF. W96, W104 (Feb. 13, 2002),
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/early/2002/02/13/hlthaff.w2.96.short [https://perma.cc
/V5G6-DW2X].
6
. See, e.g., Public Meeting of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission 309, 380–
400 (Nov. 8, 2006), transcript available at http://www.medpac.gov/docs/default
-source/meeting-materials/november-2006-meeting-transcript.pdf?sfvrsn=0 [https://perma.cc
/BB5N-G57L] (describing the ACO model variously as “extended hospital medical staff” and
“accountable organization”); David Cutler, How Health Care Reform Must Bend the Cost
Curve, 29 HEALTH AFF. 1131 (2010); Elliot S. Fisher, Douglas O. Staiger, Julie P.W. Bynum
& Daniel J. Gottlieb, Creating Accountable Care Organizations: The Extended Hospital
Medical Staff, 26 HEALTH AFF. w44 (2007).
7
. See Bob Kocher & Farzad Mostashari, Opinion, A Health Care Success Story, N.Y.
TIMES (Sept. 23, 2014), http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/opinion/a-health-care-success
-story.html [https://perma.cc/4CC4-4PLB]; Robert Pear, Health Care Spending Disparities
Stir a Fight, N.Y. TIMES (June 8, 2009), http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/us/politics
/09health.html [https://perma.cc/BF7A-R6L7].
8
. Examples include the Medicare Shared Savings Program, 42 U.S.C. § 1395jjj
(2012); the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1395ww(o) (West
2015); and the National Pilot Program on Payment Bundling, 42 U.S.C. § 1395cc-4 (2012).
58 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
repetitive services, encourage shared resources, and reduce overhead expenses.
9
Vertical integration in health care commonly occurs when a hospital purchases a
physician practice, making the resulting entity responsible for both inpatient and
outpatient care. Unfortunately, in this effort to control utilization, we have
overlooked the other half of the cost control equation: prices.
10
Health care cost containment efforts must consist of two parts: reducing
overutilization and constraining health care prices.
11
Just like going to the grocery
store, the amount of your bill depends on how many items you buy as well as the
price of each item. The United States will not bend the cost curve without
addressing private health care prices.
12
High prices are the main reason the United
States spends so much more on health care than other wealthy, developed
countries.
13
Moreover, similar to the overutilization problem, the higher prices we
pay do not result in more or better quality care nor do they lead to better health
outcomes.
14
While it may be true that nearly a third of Medicare spending is
waste,
15
when looking at our total public and private health care spending, price
increases explain most of the rise in U.S. health care costs,
16
eclipsing the effects of
increasing utilization, the aging or sickness of the population, the supply of health
care services, malpractice litigation, and defensive medicine.
17
9
. See KAISER FAMILY FOUND., SUMMARY OF THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT (2013),
http://kff.org/health-reform/fact-sheet/summary-of-the-affordable-care-act [https://perma.cc
/9UMJ-CUK2].
10
. See Kevin Quealy & Margot Sanger-Katz, The Experts Were Wrong About the Best
Places for Better and Cheaper Health Care, N.Y. TIMES: THE UPSHOT (Dec. 15, 2015),
http://
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/15/upshot/the-best-places-for-better-cheaper-health-care
-arent-what-experts-thought.html [https://perma.cc/9XNR-CJRB] (quoting Robert Berenson,
fellow at the Urban Institute, as saying “[p]rice has been ignored in public policy”).
11
. Erin C. Fuse Brown, The Blind Spot in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act’s Cost-Control Policies, 163 ANNALS INTERNAL MED. 871 (2015).
12
. See Zack Cooper, Stuart Craig, Martin Gaynor & John Van Reenen, The Price Ain’t
Right? Hospital Prices and Health Spending on the Privately Insured 2–3 (Dec. 2015)
(unpublished manuscript), http://www.healthcarepricingproject.org/sites/default/files/pricing
_variation_manuscript_0.pdf [https://perma.cc/3V7T-LL2X].
13
. Gerard F. Anderson, Uwe E. Reinhardt, Peter S. Hussey & Varduhi Petrosyan, It's
the Prices, Stupid: Why the United States Is So Different from Other Countries, 22 HEALTH
AFF. 89, 103 (2003); Bruce C. Vladeck & Thomas Rice, Market Failure and the Failure of
Discourse: Facing Up to the Power of Sellers, 28 HEALTH AFF. 1305, 1305–06 (2009).
14
. See Vladeck & Rice, supra note 13, at 1306.
15
. See Wennberg et al., supra note 5, at W104.
16
. Gerard F. Anderson, Peter S. Hussey, Bianca K. Frogner & Hugh R. Waters, Health
Spending in the United States and the Rest of the Industrialized World, 24 HEALTH AFF. 903,
904 (2005); Hamilton Moses III, David H. M. Matheson, E. Ray Dorsey, Benjamin P.
George, David Sadoff & Satoshi Yoshimura, The Anatomy of Health Care in the United
States, 310 JAMA 1947, 1949 (2013).
17
. Anderson et al., supra note 16, at 904; Moses III et al., supra note 16, at 1949 (“Be-
tween 2000 and 2011, increase in price (particularly of drugs, medical devices, and hospital
care), not intensity of service or demographic change, produced most of the increase in
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 59
In the United States, the health care pricing problem is largely a provider market
power problem.
18
Within the same geographic area, there can be a 60% difference
between the highest- and lowest-priced hospitals for the same inpatient service, and
a twofold difference in prices for outpatient services.
19
A substantial body of
research demonstrates that market power drives these unwarranted variations in
price between providers, not differences in quality, payer mix, demographics, or
health of the patient population.
20
In other words, when we pay more at a high-price
provider, we rarely receive more or better care; we simply pay more for its market
leverage.
21
Unfortunately, the vertical integration used to target overutilization may also in-
crease provider market leverage.
22
The primary vehicle for achieving vertical inte-
gration in the ACA is the Accountable Care Organization (ACO), a group of affili-
ated doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers that cooperate to provide
health’s share of GDP.”); OFFICE OF ATT’Y GEN. MARTHA COAKLEY, EXAMINATION OF
HEALTH CARE COST TRENDS AND COST DRIVERS 3–4, 16–27, 35 (2010),
http://www.mass.gov/ago/docs
/healthcare/2010-hcctd-full.pdf [https://perma.cc/928G-3242] (“Price increases, not increases
in utilization, caused most of the increases in health care costs during the past few years in
Massachusetts.”).
18
. See, e.g., PAUL B. GINSBURG, CTR. FOR STUDYING HEALTH SYS. CHANGE, RESEARCH
BRIEF NO. 16, WIDE VARIATION IN HOSPITAL AND PHYSICIAN PAYMENT RATES EVIDENCE OF
PROVIDER MARKET POWER 6 (2010), http://www.hschange.org/CONTENT/1162/1162.pdf
[https://perma.cc/U2XN-HGAH]; CHAPIN WHITE, AMELIA M. BOND & JAMES D.
RESCHOVSKY, CTR. FOR STUDYING HEALTH SYS. CHANGE, RESEARCH BRIEF NO. 27, HIGH AND
VARYING PRICES FOR PRIVATELY INSURED PATIENTS UNDERSCORE HOSPITAL MARKET POWER
2 (2013), http://www.hschange.com/CONTENT/1375/1375.pdf [https://perma.cc/987U-AVYX];
Robert A. Berenson, Paul G. Ginsburg, Jon B. Christianson & Tracy Yee, The Growing
Power of Some Providers To Win Steep Payment Increases from Insurers Suggests Policy
Remedies May Be Needed, 31 HEALTH AFF. 973, 973 (2012); Robert Berenson,
Acknowledging the Elephant: Moving Market Power and Prices to the Center of Health
Policy, HEALTH AFF. BLOG (June 3, 2014),
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2014/06/03/acknowledging-the-elephant-moving
-market-power-and-prices-to-the-center-of-health-policy/ [https://perma.cc/CC5X-4M9R].
19
. WHITE ET AL., supra note 18, at 2–4.
20
. OFFICE OF ATT’Y GEN. MARTHA COAKLEY, supra note 17, at 2–4; Joseph P.
Newhouse & Alan M. Garber, Geographic Variation in Health Care Spending in the United
States: Insights from an Institute of Medicine Report, 310 JAMA 1227, 1227–28 (2013)
(“[P]rice variation is responsible for an estimated 70% of the total geographic variation in
spending among privately insured persons. Variation in wage levels and variation in the
quantity of services delivered are almost equally responsible for the remaining estimated
30% of spending variation.”); Cooper et al., supra note 12, at 3 (concluding that hospital
market structure, that is, the degree of competition in the market, is strongly associated with
hospital prices); GINSBURG, supra note 18, at 7.
21
. OFFICE OF ATT’Y GEN. MARTHA COAKLEY, supra note 17, at 3–4; see GINSBURG,
supra note 18, at 6.
22
. Katherine Baicker & Helen Levy, Coordination Versus Competition in Health Care
Reform, 369 NEW ENG. J. MED. 789, 789–91 (2013).
60 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
high-quality, coordinated care to a specific patient population.
23
To form an ACO,
provider organizations can integrate clinically, structurally, and/or financially.
However, obtaining the desired clinical and financial integration can also open the
door for health care provider organizations to vertically integrate in ways that
further consolidate health care markets, increase provider market leverage, and
raise prices. Despite all the hoped-for benefits from health care integration, there is
no empirical evidence showing that the wave of integration is generating
efficiencies or widespread savings. On the contrary, all the emerging literature on
vertical integration between hospitals and physicians points in the same troubling
direction: vertical integration is associated with increased prices and reduced
consumer welfare.
24
This article examines the overlooked half of the narrative on health care cost
control: rising prices and the policy levers held by the states to address them.
Specifically, we challenge the conventional wisdom that policies directed at health
care integration and utilization controls alone can meaningfully reduce health
spending, and we consider the potentially harmful effects from increasing vertical
integration between hospitals and provider organizations.
25
We argue that
unregulated vertical integration is a double-edged sword that poses significant risks
to consumer welfare from increased health care prices. Due to already highly
concentrated health care markets and the limits of federal antitrust enforcement of
vertical health care integration, states have both an opportunity and an obligation to
supplement federal antitrust efforts to control rising health care prices stemming
from health care integration.
The way to address the double-edged sword of vertical health care integration is
to allow beneficial integration with a quid pro quo that the integrating entities must
submit to oversight regarding price, quality, and competition. We offer six policy
initiatives available to states in order of least to greatest amount of intervention into
the state’s health care market: all-payer claims databases (APCDs); state antitrust
enforcement or immunity; ACO certification programs; rate oversight authority;
provider price caps; and rate regulation.
26
23
. Accountable Care Organizations (ACO), CTRS. MEDICARE & MEDICAID SERVS. (Jan.
6, 2015, 2:58 PM), https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Medicare-Fee-for-Service-Payment/ACO
/index.html?redirect=/ACO/ [https://perma.cc/2JH4-FX2D].
24
. A discussion of this literature is set forth infra Part II.
25
. In this article, we focus specifically on vertical integration because antitrust authori-
ties have generally treated its use as procompetitive. As a result of this treatment, antitrust
analysis and guidance for vertical integration efforts are much less robust than for horizontal
consolidation among direct substitutes or competitors, such as mergers among hospitals.
26
. States may also increase health care competition by implementing policies to elimi-
nate certificate-of-need laws that pose barriers to entry for new health facilities, loosening of
scope-of-practice laws to allow different types of mid-level providers to compete with or
augment the supply of physician services, or regulating provider-plan contracting practices
to restrict anticompetitive use of most-favored-nation or anti-tiering clauses. We do not
discuss these policies here because they mostly address threats to horizontal competition
rather than describing ways states can oversee vertically integrated entities. For a good
discussion of these options, see NAT’L ACAD. SOC. INS., ADDRESSING PRICING POWER IN
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 61
Given the range of initiatives, legislators should vary their policy prescription
based upon the particular market and political dynamics in the state. Three key in-
gredients, however, emerge as critical for effective state oversight of vertical inte-
gration and private price increases: (1) Information—states must have a means to
collect and analyze price, quality, utilization, and market data, such as an all-payer
claims database, in order to match their policy approach to their market and to eval-
uate their success; (2) Independence—state oversight bodies must be insulated
from the powerful providers they oversee; and (3) Regulatory Authority—state
oversight bodies must have the authority to enforce or impose limits on providers’
prices when they become too high.
This Article explores the states’ critical role in addressing the double-edged
sword of health care integration. Part I documents the rise of vertical health care
integration driven by its theoretical benefits, as well as the legal incentives to
integrate. Part II describes the emerging evidence that vertical integration in health
care may also pose a threat to competition and lead to increased prices. Part III
explains that states have a key role to play in managing this threat because of the
limits of federal antitrust enforcement, federal oversight, and market-based
solutions. Part IV posits that the way to manage the double-edged sword of vertical
health care integration is to permit beneficial integration to proceed in exchange for
price and quality oversight by states. Part IV goes on to examine an array of policy
tools that all build upon robust all-payer claims data gathering to inform future
health policy decisions.
I. THE RISE OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION
Health care in the United States is notoriously fragmented and inefficient.
27
A
popular policy view posits that increased vertical integration and collaboration in
health care can reduce waste, increase efficiency, and improve quality by altering
the financial incentives to overuse care and permitting physicians and other
providers to more easily coordinate care.
28
Accordingly, recent health care reforms
have created powerful incentives for providers and even health plans to form
vertically integrated systems, whether to operate an ACO or better manage the shift
away from fee-for-service to new payment models based on value.
29
But little is
known about what conditions are required for health care integration to achieve
these efficiencies or whether the benefits of integration outweigh the risks to
competition and concentration of market power. Part I explores the theoretical
HEALTH CARE MARKETS: PRINCIPLES AND POLICY OPTIONS TO STRENGTHEN AND SHAPE
MARKETS 29–37 (2015) [hereinafter NASI PANEL ON PRICING POWER],
https://www.nasi.org/sites/default/files/research
/Addressing_Pricing_Power_in_Health_Care_Markets.pdf [https://perma.cc/7ASE-W8YG].
27
. See, e.g., THE FRAGMENTATION OF U.S. HEALTH CARE: CAUSES AND SOLUTIONS
(Einer Elhauge ed., 2010).
28
. See Cutler, supra note 6, at 1133–34.
29
. Similar incentives exist for horizontal consolidations between hospitals or between
health insurers. Indeed, the pace of horizontal mergers in health care has also increased fol-
lowing the passage of the ACA. See Leemore Dafny, Hospital Industry Consolidation—Still
More To Come?, 370 NEW ENG. J. MED. 198, 198 (2014).
62 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
promise of vertical health care integration and the incentives for integration
contained in various legal reforms, including the ACA.
A. Theoretical Benefits of Vertical Integration
Unlike horizontal consolidation,
30
vertical integration is theoretically ambigu-
ous—it may achieve increased efficiencies, but it may also serve to enhance market
power.
31
In microeconomics, vertical integration refers to the common ownership
of two different stages of production of a product, such as manufacturing and
distribution.
32
In health care, vertical integration refers to the integration of
suppliers of different components of health care services, such as hospitals and
physicians, as well as integration of health systems and health plans, which
collectively supply different elements of the health care product to the ultimate
consumer.
33
According to neoclassical economic models, vertical integration enhances effi-
ciency by reducing transaction costs and arm’s-length contracting across separate
organizations.
34
In health care, vertical integration has similarly been thought to im-
prove efficiency through improved care coordination and reduction of
fragmentation among providers and payers.
35
Common ownership of hospitals and
physician inputs in the health care “supply chain” can align financial incentives
between hospitals and referring physicians, reduce duplicative or unnecessary care,
provide centralized administrative services, and reduce transaction costs by
30
. The literature on the anticompetitive potential of horizontal consolidation among
hospitals is clearer than for vertical integration. See, e.g., MARTIN GAYNOR & ROBERT TOWN,
ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUND., THE IMPACT OF HOSPITAL CONSOLIDATION—UPDATE
(2012), http://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/issue_briefs/2012/rwjf73261 [https://
perma.cc/JK6R-397T]. Our analysis, therefore, focuses on the “harder case” of vertical
health care integration. See Thomas L. Greaney, Competition Policy After Health Care
Reform: Mending Holes in Antitrust Law’s Protective Net, 40 J. HEALTH POL. POL’Y & L.
897, 897–98 (2015).
31
. Martin Gaynor & Robert J. Town, Competition in Health Care Markets, in 2
HANDBOOK OF HEALTH ECONOMICS 499, 620 (Mark V. Pauly, Thomas G. McGuire & Pedro
Pita Barros eds., 2012).
32
. See Austin B. Frakt, Steven D. Pizer & Roger Feldman, Plan-Provider Integration,
Premiums, and Quality in the Medicare Advantage Market, 48 HEALTH SERVS. RES. 1996,
1999 (2013).
33
. Christopher Afendulis & Daniel Kessler, Vertical Integration and Optimal
Reimbursement Policy 5 (Nat’l Bureau of Econ. Research, Working Paper No. 17316, 2011).
34
. Laurence C. Baker, M. Kate Bundorf & Daniel P. Kessler, Vertical Integration:
Hospital Ownership of Physician Practices Is Associated with Higher Prices and Spending,
33 HEALTH AFFAIRS 756, 756–57 (2014); Gaynor & Town, supra note 31, at 619–20.
35
. See, e.g., Baker et al., supra note 34, at 756–57; Lawton Robert Burns, Jeff C.
Goldsmith & Aditi Sen, Horizontal and Vertical Integration of Physicians: A Tale of Two
Tails, 15 ADVANCES HEALTH CARE MGMT. 39, 66–70 (2013); Stephen L. Walston, John R.
Kimberly & Lawton R. Burns, Owned Vertical Integration and Health Care: Promise and
Performance, 21 HEALTH CARE MGMT. REV. 83, 84–85 (1996).
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 63
allowing joint contracting with third-party payers.
36
Vertical mergers of hospitals
and physicians or health plans into integrated delivery systems may reduce the
costs of complex negotiations between providers and payers. Between hospitals and
physicians, arm’s-length contracts are costly to establish, whether due to health
care fraud and abuse laws that limit hospital-physician contracts or payment
systems that separate hospital and physician payments.
37
As a result, vertical
integration in health care has the potential to create significant efficiencies.
B. Policy Incentives for Vertical Integration
Based on these economic assumptions and the utilization-centered narrative of
health care cost containment,
38
the ACA offers numerous incentives to promote
vertical integration in health care. The primary example is the Medicare Shared
Savings Program, which encourages providers to form ACOs for Medicare
beneficiaries, with the intent that private payers would adopt the model as well.
39
ACOs are groups of providers organized into a formal legal entity that agrees to be
collectively accountable for the cost and quality of the health care for a defined
population of individuals.
40
The ACO structure rewards groups of providers for
improving quality and care coordination while reducing unnecessary utilization by
paying them a share of the amount they save for the payer.
41
To the extent that an
ACO assumes insurance risk, the providers within the ACO have an incentive to
36
. Afendulis & Kessler, supra note 33, at 5.
37
. Baker et al., supra note 34, at 757; William M. Sage, Getting the Product Right:
How Competition Policy Can Improve Health Care Markets, 33 HEALTH AFF. 1076, 1078
(2014).
38
. See supra text accompanying notes 4–7. Federal cost control policy also tends to
focus on Medicare, and because the government sets the prices in Medicare, the
opportunities to control Medicare spending focus on ways to reduce overutilization.
However, these assumptions do not apply to private health care spending. See Cooper et al.,
supra note 12, at 1–3 (“[V]ariation in providers’ transaction prices across HRRs [Hospital
Referral Regions] is the primary driver of spending variation for the privately insured,
whereas variation in the quantity of care provided across HRRs is the primary driver of
Medicare spending variation.”); Newhouse & Garber, supra note 20, at 1227–28 (“Whereas
price variation explains almost none of the overall variation in Medicare expenditures (after
adjusting for wage variation), price variation is responsible for an estimated 70% of the total
geographic variation in spending among privately insured persons.”).
39
. See 42 U.S.C. § 1395jjj (2012); 42 C.F.R. § 425 (2015); see also Thomas L.
Greaney, Regulators as Market-Makers: Accountable Care Organizations and Competition
Policy, 46 ARIZ. ST. L.J. 1, 16–17 (2014).
40
. Gary E. Bacher, Michael E. Chernew, Daniel P. Kessler & Stephen M. Weiner,
Regulatory Neutrality Is Essential to Establishing a Level Playing Field for Accountable
Care Organizations, 32 HEALTH AFF. 1426, 1426 (2013).
41
. See Elliott S. Fisher, Mark B. McClellan, John Bertko, Steven M. Lieberman, Julie
J. Lee, Julie L. Lewis & Jonathan S. Skinner, Fostering Accountable Health Care: Moving
Forward in Medicare, 28 HEALTH AFF. W219, w222 (2009), http://content.healthaffairs.org
/content/28/2/w219.full.pdf [https://perma.cc/N882-U8NK].
64 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
reduce the overall volume of services and reduce waste.
42
Shared savings payments
for ACOs further encourage hospitals and physicians to integrate to increase
efficiency and reduce costs. Vertically integrated entities can more easily share
data, eliminate redundancy, invest in interoperable health information technology,
and implement clinical protocols that cross care settings. Further, vertical
integration can make it easier to reduce “internal agency problems and take
advantage of economies of scope.”
43
Other Medicare programs, such as bundled payments or value-based purchasing,
also create incentives for fragmented providers to work together, coordinate care,
and collectively internalize the costs of disparate aspects of an entire care episode.
The payment bundling program pays providers a single lump-sum payment to
cover all inpatient, physician, outpatient, and post-acute services involved in the
episode of care.
44
The ACA also implements significant payment cuts to hospitals
according to measures of quality and value. These payment changes include
Medicare rate cuts for excessive readmissions
45
and hospital-acquired conditions,
46
and calculating Medicare bonuses or penalties based on measures of value.
47
The
upshot of all these Medicare payment reforms for providers is that they are
assuming more financial risk and experiencing major changes to their business and
revenue models, built on the old fee-for-service and diagnosis-based
reimbursement methods.
Providers may look to consolidation to maximize their ability to assume
financial risk. Bigger systems have more enrollees, and ACOs need to be
sufficiently large to be able to absorb financial risk and make the financial
investments needed to achieve economies of scope necessary to generate cost
savings on which ACO payments depend.
48
Furthermore, the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) have largely focused their
antitrust policy guidance and review on horizontal provider consolidation, further
42
. JEFF GOLDSMITH, LAWTON R. BURNS, ADITI SEN & TREVOR GOLDSMITH, NAT’L
ACAD. SOC. INS., INTEGRATED DELIVERY NETWORKS: IN SEARCH OF BENEFITS AND MARKET
EFFECTS 1–2 (2015).
43
. Alison Evans Cuellar & Paul J. Gertler, Strategic Integration of Hospitals and
Physicians, 25 J. HEALTH ECON. 1, 4 (2006).
44
. 42 U.S.C. § 1395cc-4 (2012); see also CHAPIN WHITE, JAMES D. RESCHOVSKY &
AMELIA M. BOND, NAT’L INST. FOR HEALTH CARE REFORM, RESEARCH BRIEF NO. 14,
INPATIENT HOSPITAL PRICES DRIVE SPENDING VARIATION FOR EPISODES OF CARE FOR
PRIVATELY INSURED PATIENTS 2 (2014).
45
. 42 U.S.C. § 300gg-17(a)(1)(B) (2012); see, e.g., Jordan Rau, Half of Nation’s
Hospitals Fail Again To Escape Medicare’s Readmission Penalties, KAISER HEALTH NEWS
(Aug. 3, 2015), http://khn.org/news/half-of-nations-hospitals-fail-again-to-escape-medicares
-readmission-penalties/ [https://perma.cc/4SMD-AST6].
46
. 42 U.S.C.A. § 1395ww(p) (West 2015).
47
. 42 U.S.C.A. § 1395ww(o).
48
. Stephen M. Shortell, Carrie H. Colla, Valerie A. Lewis, Elliot Fisher, Eric Kessel &
Patricia Ramsay, Accountable Care Organizations: The National Landscape, 40 J. HEALTH
POL. POL’Y & L. 645, 659–60 (2015) (estimating that ACOs need approximately 25,000–
50,000 enrollees to make investments needed for success).
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 65
encouraging providers to integrate vertically.
49
In 2015, Congress passed the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act
(MACRA), which, among other things, repealed the formula that ties Medicare
physician payments to a “sustainable growth rate” (SGR).
50
MACRA adds to the
momentum of provider consolidation by shifting more physicians to value-based
and alternative payment models. Also known as the “doc fix,” MACRA replaced
the widely unpopular SGR-based formula with a plan to implement Medicare
physician fee bonuses based on participation in alternative payment models, such
as ACOs.
51
For physicians who do not participate in alternative payment models,
MACRA adjusts their fee-for-service rates according to a merit-based incentive
program that takes into account the physician’s quality measures, resource use, and
adoption of electronic health records.
52
On top of the incentives already in the ACA, MACRA pushes more physicians
to join ACOs. Even for physicians who stick with fee-for-service, the incentive-
based adjustments to their fees nudge physicians toward integration with larger
systems due to the administrative burden and expense of implementing quality
reporting, electronic health records, and resource use analysis. Together, the
payment reforms of the ACA and MACRA are driving an upsurge of vertical health
care integration.
The ACA’s incentives extend beyond payment changes. The regulatory environ-
ment also favors clinical and financial integration among hospitals, physicians, and
other types of providers (such as post-acute providers) by providing valuable
waivers for onerous regulatory regimes like the Stark Law, Anti-Kickback Statute,
and limited antitrust scrutiny to providers who implement a Medicare ACO or
bundled payment pilot program.
53
Provider liability under the Stark Law,
49
. See Statement of Antitrust Enforcement Policy Regarding Accountable Care
Organizations Participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program, 76 Fed. Reg. 67,026
(Oct. 28, 2011); U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE & FED. COMM’N, STATEMENTS OF ANTITRUST
ENFORCEMENT POLICY IN HEALTH CARE (1996); FED. TRADE COMM’N & U.S. DEP’T OF
JUSTICE, ANTITRUST GUIDELINES FOR COLLABORATIONS AMONG COMPETITORS 3 (2000); U.S.
DEP’T OF JUSTICE & FED. TRADE COMM’N, HORIZONTAL MERGER GUIDELINES (2010); see also
Deborah L. Feinstein, Director, Bureau of Competition, Fed. Trade Comm’n, Address at
Fifth National Accountable Care Organization Summit—Washington DC: Antitrust
Enforcement in Health Care: Proscription, Not Prescription (June 19, 2014).
50
. Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), Pub. L. No.
114-10, § 101(a)(1), 129 Stat. 87, 89 (2015).
51
. Id. § 101(a)(2).
52
. Id. § 101(b); Medicare Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and
Alternative Payment Model (APM) Under the Physician Fee Schedule, 81 Fed. Reg. 77,008
(Nov. 4, 2016) (to be codified at 42 C.F.R. pt. 414) (setting forth CMS’s final rule for
physician payment under MACRA); see, e.g., Frequently Asked Questions on MACRA and
Medicare Payment Reform, AM. ACAD. FAM. PHYSICIANS, http://www.aafp.org/practice-
management
/payment/medicare-payment/faq.html [https://perma.cc/8K5Y-ZB9M].
53
. See 42 U.S.C. § 1899jjj(f) (2012) (granting Secretary of Health and Human Services
the authority to waive requirements of the Stark Law, Anti-Kickback Statute, and Civil
Monetary Penalties Statute as needed to carry out the Medicare Shared Savings Program);
66 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
compounded with the False Claims Act’s treble damages, create an environment of
extreme financial risk for hospitals, physicians, and other providers who seek to
more closely align financial incentives and clinical processes. The greatest
regulatory flexibility comes with forming a Medicare-approved ACO because then
the ACO participants, and the payments made between them, are largely exempted
from having to comply with the Stark Law and the Anti-Kickback Statute.
54
In addition, the antitrust review process for ACOs only applies to independent
entities collaborating to form an ACO, which may also create an incentive for verti-
cally situated health care entities to merge into a unified delivery system prior to
applying to participate in the Medicare Shared Savings Program, to ease the
approval process. While the prior merger would be subject to FTC oversight and
review, the FTC has challenged very few vertical mergers, and none among health
care entities.
55
Thus, if a hospital or physician group is contemplating forming a
relationship to coordinate care, share referrals, and assume responsibility for the
health and spending of a population of patients, there are strong regulatory
incentives to merge or form a fully integrated ACO rather than adopting looser,
contractual forms of alignment. These regulatory incentives are further enhanced
by increases in market power and leverage that could arise from a merger or
integration.
Many of the desired benefits of clinical and financial integration, however, do
not require health care entities to merge or formally integrate. Vertical integration
can occur on several levels. The loosest form of vertical integration, the open
contract form, would be a nonexclusive contractual relationship between a hospital
and a group of physicians, such as the hospital’s medical staff or an independent
practice association (IPA), in which the hospital provides some administrative
support for health plan contracting and may engage in nominal care-coordination
activities.
56
An intermediate form of vertical integration, the closed contract form,
would involve an exclusive contractual relationship between the hospital and a
select group of physicians, in which the hospital provides higher levels of
administrative and management services (e.g., electronic health records, billing,
utilization and quality review, etc.), private health plan contracting, and care
coordination.
57
The tightest form of vertical integration is when the hospital owns
the physician practices or directly employs the physicians.
58
ACOs themselves can
be organized along a spectrum from loose to tight integration between hospitals and
physician-participants. While entities in these looser models can still engage in
Medicare Program; Final Waivers in Connection with the Shared Savings Program, 76 Fed.
Reg. 67992, 67999–68001 (Nov. 2, 2011); Statement of Antitrust Enforcement Policy
Regarding Accountable Care Organizations Participating in the Medicare Shared Savings
Program, 76 Fed. Reg. 67026 (Oct. 28, 2011); I.R.S. Notice 2011-20, 2011-16 I.R.B. 652.
54
. Medicare Program; Final Waivers in Connection with the Shared Savings Program,
supra note 53, at 67999–68001.
55
. See Feinstein, supra note 49, at 8; see, e.g., St. Alphonsus Med. Ctr.–Nampa, Inc. v.
St. Luke’s Health Sys., Ltd., 778 F.3d 775, 791 (9th Cir. 2015), aff’g Nos. 1:12-CV-00560-
BLW, 1:13-CV-00116-BLW, 2014 WL 272339 (D. Idaho Jan. 24, 2014).
56
. Baker et al., supra note 34, at 759.
57
. Id.
58
. Id.
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 67
significant clinical and financial integration (such as shared electronic medical
records systems, payment incentives, and quality-of-care reporting mechanisms),
tighter forms of integration may be encouraged by financial and regulatory
incentives.
Because of the promise of accountable care and the payment incentives through
reform efforts, the pace of all types of vertical health care integration has increased.
From 2004 to 2011, hospital ownership of physician practices, the tightest form of
hospital-physician integration, increased from 24% to 49%.
59
The Government
Accountability Office reports that the number of vertically integrated physicians
nearly doubled from 95,000 to 182,000 between 2007 and 2013.
60
Although not all
ACOs necessarily involve vertical integration of hospitals and physicians, most
do.
61
Following the passage of the ACA, the growth of ACOs has been rapid, with
more than 700 ACOs established nationwide by 2015, about evenly split between
Medicare and commercial ACOs.
62
ACOs cover approximately 23.5 million
individuals, and only about a third of this total (7.8 million) are Medicare
enrollees.
63
It is projected that a majority of Americans will receive their care from
an ACO by 2018.
64
Some of the same trends driving health care provider integration are also
contributing to an increase in plan-provider integrations. New payment models, like
global payments, require provider organizations to assume more financial risk,
which entails being responsible for the cost of care for an entire population of
patients. Up to a point, the larger an organization is, the better it is able to assume
population risk and invest in systems to meet quality targets. However, as it does,
the provider network must assume more of the functions and capacity of health
insurers. An ACO or a health system that is part of an ACO will be more likely to
meet quality and cost- savings goals if it has the capacity to manage clinical,
quality, and cost data and to take on financial risk, and one of the easiest ways for
providers to acquire this capacity is to merge with a health plan.
65
From the payers’ perspective, health insurers are increasingly regulated under
the ACA even while insurance market dynamics are changing. Many plans are
either shifting more of the insurance/financial risk to providers (through ACOs and
alternative payment systems) or leaving insurance risk with self-insured employers.
Health plans are marketing their capacities for financial risk management, data
59
. Id.; David M. Cutler & Fiona Scott Morton, Hospitals, Market Share, and
Consolidation, 310 JAMA 1964, 1966 (2013).
60
. U.S. GOV’T ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE, MEDICARE: INCREASING HOSPITAL-PHYSICIAN
CONSOLIDATION HIGHLIGHTS NEED FOR PAYMENT REFORM 9 (2015).
61
. Stephen M. Shortell, Frances M. Wu, Valerie A. Lewis, Carrie H. Colla & Elliott S.
Fisher, A Taxonomy of Accountable Care Organizations for Policy and Practice, 49 HEALTH
SERVS. RES. 1883, 1889 (2014).
62
. Shortell et al., supra note 48, at 646.
63
. David Muhlestein, Growth and Dispersion of Accountable Care Organizations in
2015, HEALTH AFF. BLOG (Mar. 31, 2015), http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2015/03/31/growth-and
-dispersion-of-accountable-care-organizations-in-2015-2/ [https://perma.cc/45TD-A42D].
64
. Id.
65
. See Frakt et al., supra note 32, at 1997.
68 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
gathering and analysis, and care management to providers via management services
contracts or consolidation into common entities.
66
The ACA’s requirements,
including medical-loss ratios,
67
limits on underwriting activities,
68
guaranteed
issue,
69
and the Cadillac Tax on costly employer-sponsored health plans
70
are
altering the business models of health plans and putting limits on the amount of
profits the plans can earn from their premium revenue. As a result, health plans are
looking for ways to increase their market share and shift their function to more of
an administrative role, such as processing claims and gathering data on quality and
cost. These trends are pushing more health plans to consider combinations with
providers.
Consequently, vertical integration between providers and health plans is rising.
In one report from 2012, approximately 20% of hospital networks offered an
integrated insurance plan, with another 20% contemplating doing so.
71
Within the
Medicare Advantage market, in which Medicare beneficiaries receive Medicare
services through private managed care plans, about 17% of Medicare Advantage
plans were integrated with providers in 2013.
72
A 2015 poll of fifty-eight chief
executive officers of health care providers and plans found that 88% predicted more
plan-provider collaboration in the next three to five years.
73
For instance, several
hospital systems in California, other than Kaiser Permanente,
74
have begun offering
insurance through Covered California (California’s health care marketplace under
the ACA).
75
Whether between hospitals and physicians or plans and providers, vertical inte-
gration in health care is on the rise. Providers are rapidly consolidating before we
have a clear sense of what effect this integration will have on health care markets
and prices. The early evidence is ominous.
66
. Victor R. Fuchs & Leonard D. Schaeffer, If Accountable Care Organizations Are
the Answer, Who Should Create Them?, 307 JAMA 2261, 2262 (2012).
67
. 42 U.S.C. § 1395w-27 (2010).
68
. 42 U.S.C. § 300gg-3 (2011).
69
. 26 U.S.C. § 35 (2012).
70
. 26 U.S.C. § 4980I (2010).
71
. Roni C. Rabin, Some Hospital Networks Also Become Insurers, WASH. POST (Aug.
25, 2012), http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/some-hospital-networks-also-become-
insurers/2012/08/25/53e90a72-eb1d-11e1-b811-09036bcb182b_story.html.
72
. See Frakt et al., supra note 32, at 1997.
73
. Joseph Conn, Closer Provider-Insurer Ties Bring New Challenges, MODERN
HEALTHCARE (Aug. 15, 2015), http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20150815/MAGAZINE
/308159969 [https://perma.cc/74G7-AQSW].
74
. Kaiser Permanente is the dominant integrated delivery system in California, which
has offered fully integrated care since the 1940s. Fast Facts About Kaiser Permanente,
KAISER PERMANENTE, http://share.kaiserpermanente.org/article/fast-facts-about-kaiser-
permanente/ [https://perma.cc/3RTE-XMU3].
75
. Kathleen E. Foote & Emilio E. Varanini, A Few Thoughts About ACO Antitrust
Issues from a Local Enforcement Perspective, 40 J. HEALTH POL. POL’Y & L. 887, 890
(2015).
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 69
II. THE DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF VERTICAL HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION
Despite its many anticipated benefits, vertical health care integration presents a
double-edged sword. The effort to promote beneficial integration has opened the
door to health care consolidation across the country. Emerging empirical data
reveals that vertical integration carries significant downside risks to competition
and consumer welfare through increases in market power, increases in referrals and
reimbursement rates, and reductions in consumer choice. Moreover, these studies
have not found any evidence supporting the assumptions that vertical health care
integration generates efficiencies or reduces costs.
A. Increased Market Power
Theoretical models suggest that vertical integration between hospitals and physi-
cians can harm competition by conferring greater market power on the merged
entity. First, if at least one of the parties (either the hospital or physician group) has
market power pre-merger, then a merger of the two can increase the aggregate
market power of the merged entity vis-à-vis health plans.
76
In 1999, Ester Gal-Or
argued that the profitability of vertical hospital-physician mergers depended on the
relative competitiveness between the hospital and physician markets.
77
She
reasoned that when the merging hospital and physician markets share similar levels
of competitiveness, the merged entity can negotiate higher rates due to increased
market power.
78
The market power increase is strongest when both merging entities
are in highly concentrated markets. By contrast, when the relative level of
competitiveness differs significantly between the two markets, vertical mergers
between physicians and hospitals may be unprofitable unless the merger includes a
vertical restraint requiring exclusivity between the parties.
79
One way vertical integration increases the market share of the merged entity is
through tying hospital and physician services together. Hospitals that acquire physi-
cian groups can effectively lock up the referral pool of physicians and bundle
hospital and physician services together when negotiating with payers.
80
This type
of tying increases bargaining power of the merged provider-entity because in order
for an insurer to include one provider in its network, it must also include other tied
providers or services, often at elevated rates.
81
In highly concentrated health-care
76
. Esther Gal-Or, The Profitability of Vertical Mergers Between Hospitals and
Physician Practices, 18 J. HEALTH ECON. 623, 625 (1999); Martin Gaynor, Is Vertical
Integration Anticompetitive? Definitely Maybe (But That’s Not Final), 25 J. HEALTH ECON.
175, 180–81 (2006); Afendulis & Kessler, supra note 33, at 5.
77
. Gal-Or, supra note 76, at 625.
78
. Id. at 624. This was true even in the absence of exclusivity requirements.
79
. Id. at 625.
80
. Baker et al., supra note 34, at 757.
81
. BARAK D. RICHMAN, AM. ENTER. INST., CONCENTRATION IN HEALTH CARE
MARKETS: CHRONIC PROBLEMS AND BETTER SOLUTIONS 13 (Thomas P. Miller ed., 2012),
http://www
70 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
and health-insurance markets with significant barriers to entry, tying and refusal to
supply can lead to rival exclusion.
82
In its most extreme form, a vertically
integrated entity will require “all or nothing” dealing, in which an insurer must
either include all affiliated providers in its network or none at all.
83
One way of
achieving an “all or nothing” bargaining position is to enter into exclusive
agreements between hospitals and physician groups, where the parties are unable to
bargain with health plans outside of the tied entity.
84
“All or nothing” dealing can
lead to supracompetitive reimbursement rates across a wide range of providers in a
particular provider organization.
Another way vertical mergers can increase the merged entities’ market power is
through foreclosure.
85
Foreclosure occurs when “actual and potential competitors
are disadvantaged due to restricted access to one of the most favorable providers,”
making their costs higher for equivalent services and quality.
86
The merger of a
hospital with a physician group can foreclose rival hospitals from accessing the
services of the integrated physicians, thereby increasing market power.
87
In
particular, competitors may lose patient volume needed to support their facilities
because they cannot access the integrated physicians’ referrals.
88
Empirical evidence supporting theoretical hypotheses that vertical health care
mergers can be used to increase market power and prices has begun to emerge.
89
In
.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/-concentration-in-health-care-markets-chronic-problems
-and-better-solutions_171350288300.pdf [https://perma.cc/NWJ4-XQBD].
82
. Robert F. Leibenluft, Antitrust and Provider Collaborations: Where We’ve Been
and What Should Be Done Now, 40 J. HEALTH POL. POL’Y & L. 847, 850 (2015).
83
. NASI PANEL ON PRICING POWER, supra note 26, at 17 (describing “all-or-none” bar-
gaining by large, multihospital systems).
84
. See Gal-Or, supra note 76, at 625.
85
. Thomas L. Greaney & Douglas Ross, Navigating Through the Fog of Vertical
Merger Law: A Guide to Counselling Hospital-Physician Consolidation Under the Clayton
Act, 91 WASH. L. REV. 199 (2016).
86
. See Frakt et al., supra note 32, at 2000.
87
. Gaynor, supra note 76, at 177.
88
. Greaney & Ross, supra note 85, at 221. Although courts have not applied the
foreclosure theory to a challenged merger, in the St. Luke’s case involving the merger of St.
Luke’s health system and the Saltzer group of physicians, the private plaintiffs in the case,
rival hospital St. Alphonsus and surgery center Treasure Valley Hospital, asserted an
argument for competitive harms based on a foreclosure model. St. Alphonsus Med. Ctr.-
Nampa, Inc. v. St. Luke’s Health Sys., Ltd., 778 F.3d 775, 791 (9th Cir. 2015), aff’g 2014
WL 272339 (D. Idaho Jan. 24, 2014). These private plaintiffs posited that St. Luke’s would
gain a monopoly share of the Nampa, Idaho, market for adult primary care “foreclosing
virtually all competition for the hospital admissions of the physician practices it acquires.”
Complaint for Preliminary and Permanent Injunction and Damages at 2–3, St. Luke’s, 778
F.3d 775 (No. 1:12 Civ. 00560), 2012 WL 5882652. The complaint went on to assert that the
merger would harm the plaintiffs by causing the loss of admissions, referrals, and services
performed by Saltzer physicians. Id. Ultimately, the Ninth Circuit struck down the merger
based on horizontal grounds (the merger of physician groups) and thus did not examine the
anticompetitive impact of the vertical integration due to foreclosure. St. Luke’s, 778 F.3d at
791.
89
. See Baker et al., supra note 34; Robert A. Berenson, Paul B. Ginsburg & Nicole
Kemper, Unchecked Provider Clout in California Foreshadows Challenges to Health
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 71
an earlier study, Alison Evans Cuellar and Paul Gertler similarly found that tighter
forms of hospital-physician integration in the 1990s showed significantly higher
prices and volume than stand-alone, unintegrated providers, supporting the theory
that such vertical integrations are done to increase market power.
90
But Federico
Ciliberto and David Dranove found that vertical integration during the 1990s did
not affect hospital prices.
91
The opposite results in these two contemporaneous
studies were seen as consistent with the theory that vertical integration can be both
efficiency-enhancing and anticompetitive.
92
There are differences between the mar-
ket conditions of the 1990s and today; one significant difference is that the hospital
market is substantially more concentrated today, which may amplify the anti-
competitive effects of vertical integration between hospitals and physicians.
93
Indeed, more recent studies are starting to show that current forms of vertical in-
tegration can lead to higher prices. Laurence Baker, M. Kate Bundorf, and David
Kessler examined vertical integration between 2001 and 2007 and found that the
tightest form of vertical integration—hospital ownership of physician practices—
was associated with higher hospital prices, increased spending, and only modestly
reduced utilization in the form of hospital admissions.
94
To evaluate integration’s
effects on physician prices, Cory Capps, David Dranove, and Christopher Ody
looked at vertical mergers between 2007 and 2013 and found that physician prices
increased nearly 14% following integration with hospitals.
95
The price increase was
not due to an increase in physician market power through horizontal mergers
between physicians. Rather, the price increase corresponded to the hospital’s
market share prior to integration—the larger the market share, the greater the price
increase—which could be due to the hospital’s ability to charge facility fees for
services previously provided on an outpatient basis or patients’ willingness to pay a
premium for a plan with both a desired hospital and a preferred physician group.
96
James Robinson and Kelly Miller examined vertically integrated organizations
in California between 2009 and 2012 and found that hospital ownership of
physician organizations led to significantly higher total expenditures per patient
Reform, 29 Health AFF. 699 (2010); Alison Evans Cuellar & Paul J. Gertler, Strategic
Integration of Hospitals and Physicians, 25 J. HEALTH ECON. 1 (2006); Cory Capps, David
Dranove & Christopher Ody, The Effect of Hospital Acquisitions of Physician Practices on
Prices and Spending (Inst. for Policy Research, Northwestern Univ., Working Paper No.
WP-15-02, 2015). But see Federico Ciliberto & David Dranove, The Effect of Physician-
Hospital Affiliations on Hospital Prices in California, 25 J. HEALTH ECON. 29 (2006)
(finding no increase in costs due to physician-hospital affiliations in California).
90
. See Cuellar & Gertler, supra note 89, at 16–17, 26.
91
. See Ciliberto & Dranove, supra note 89, at 37.
92
. See Gaynor, supra note 76, at 177.
93
. See James C. Robinson & Kelly Miller, Total Expenditures per Patient in Hospital-
Owned and Physician-Owned Physician Organizations in California, 312 JAMA 1663
(2014).
94
. Baker et al., supra note 34, at 760.
95
. Capps et al., supra note 89, at 3.
96
. Id. at 3, 5–7, 36 (suggesting that only 25% of the price increases result from facility fees).
72 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
compared to physician-owned organizations.
97
The expenditures were 10.3% higher
for physician organizations owned by a local hospital, and 19.8% higher when the
physician organization was owned by a multihospital system.
98
The larger the
market share of the vertically integrated hospital owner, the greater the
expenditures. Notably, the study showed little or no evidence that vertical
consolidation of hospitals and physicians resulted in increased efficiency.
99
Another study by Hannah Neprash, Michael Chernew, Andrew Hicks, Teresa
Gibson, and Michael McWilliams found that markets with greater increases in
hospital-physician integration between 2008 and 2012 experienced significantly
greater increases in outpatient spending and prices.
100
Because commercial price
differences were greater than differences in Medicare prices, the authors concluded
that the price increases associated with the hospital-physician integration resulted
from enhanced market power of integrated providers, not just the site-of-service
differential allowing higher prices for integrated physicians, discussed below.
101
Like Robinson and Miller’s, the study by Neprash et al. found that hospital-
physician integration was not associated with reduced utilization or improved
efficiency from care coordination.
102
Empirical data on the effect of vertical integration between health plans and pro-
viders is even more limited than hospital-physician integration. In 2013, Austin
Frakt, Steven Pizer, and Roger Feldman examined the impact of plan-provider inte-
gration on health care premiums and quality in the Medicare Advantage market.
103
The study revealed that plan-provider integration was associated with higher
monthly premiums and also higher quality ratings than nonintegrated plans.
104
However, only 30% of the premium increase associated with integration was
attributable to improvements in quality.
105
Although some of the increased
premiums could have been due to benefit enhancements, the authors did not
observe a statistically significant increase in benefit generosity following
integration for several benefits examined.
106
The authors hypothesized that the
increase in premiums also could have resulted from an increase in market power
conferred on the plan from the integrated provider organization.
107
While the Frakt
97
. Robinson & Miller, supra note 93, at 1668. In this study, expenditures were
measured as the amounts insurers paid health care providers on a per-patient basis, excluding
high-cost patients (incurring >$100,000 in health care expenses annually). Id. at 1665.
98
. Id. at 1668.
99
. See id.
100
. Hannah T. Neprash, Michael E. Chernew, Andrew L. Hicks, Teresa Gibson & Mi-
chael McWilliams, Association of Financial Integration Between Physicians and Hospitals
with Commercial Health Care Prices, 175 JAMA INTERNAL MED. 1932, 1937 (2015).
101
. Id. For discussion of the site-of-service differential, see infra Part II.B.
102
. Neprash et al., supra note 100, at 1938.
103
. See Frakt et al., supra note 32, at 1996.
104
. Id. at 2008.
105
. Id. at 2008–09.
106
. Id. at 2009.
107
. Id.
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 73
et al. study has several limitations related to its generalizability and conclusions,
108
it raises significant concerns regarding the ability of plans and providers to use
vertical integration as a means to increase market power and leverage, warranting
significantly more attention from health services researchers and antitrust enforcers.
Overall, the emerging research on vertical integration has found that hospital
ownership of physician organizations correlates with higher hospital prices,
physician prices, prices for outpatient procedures, and per-patient expenditures.
Furthermore, the only study on plan-provider integration also found an association
between integration and higher premiums. These studies, and the dearth of any
findings illustrating significant efficiencies or cost savings, lend support to the view
that vertical integration in health care can be used to increase market power and
prices.
B. Increases in Referrals and Reimbursement
Another anticompetitive effect of vertical integration is that acquisition of physi-
cian groups by hospitals may increase health spending from greater utilization and
patient volume by allowing the hospital to pay for referrals within the bounds of
health care self-referral laws.
109
The federal Anti-Kickback Statute and the Stark
Law both provide greater flexibility for hospitals to compensate employed, as
opposed to contracted, physicians. For example, hospitals can pay employed
physicians productivity bonuses for services personally performed by the
physician, which would not be permitted for nonemployed physicians (i.e.,
independent contractors).
110
Hospitals also can more readily require their employed
physicians to refer patients to the hospital or to other integrated providers than they
can require of independent physicians.
111
Moreover, when the integrated entities
108
. Id. at 2009–10.
109
. Afendulis & Kessler, supra note 33, at 6–7; Capps et al., supra note 89, at 1.
110
. The Stark Law exception for bona fide employment relationships provides that enti-
ties (including hospitals) may pay employed physicians productivity bonuses for services
personally performed by the physician. The exceptions for independently contracted
physicians, including the exceptions for fair market value and personal services
arrangements exceptions, do not permit productivity bonuses. 42 C.F.R. § 411.357(c) (2008)
(bona fide employment relationships); 42 C.F.R. § 411.257(d) (personal services
arrangements); 42 C.F.R. § 411.357(l) (fair market value compensation). The Anti-Kickback
Statute safe harbor for employees permits “any amount paid by an employer to an employee,
who has a bona fide employment relationship with the employer, for employment in the
furnishing of any item or service for which payment may be made in whole or in part under
Medicare, Medicaid or other Federal health care programs.” 42 C.F.R. § 1001.952(i).
111
. See 42 C.F.R. § 411.354(d)(4) (2008) (setting forth the requirements for
conditioning a physician’s compensation on referring to certain providers). Although
hospitals may also require independent physicians to refer to the hospital in a personal
services contract, the scope of the required referrals is limited to those services covered by
the employment or personal services contract. 69 Fed. Reg. 16054, 16069–70 (Mar. 26,
2004). Because of the limited nature of personal services agreements (e.g., call-coverage
agreements, medical director agreements), the scope of services subject to required referrals
is thus much broader for employed physicians than under most personal services agreements.
74 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
share fixed assets, it is easier for them to financially benefit from referrals within
the integrated entity within the strictures of anti-referral and anti-kickback laws.
112
Hospitals, for example, are willing to acquire primary care physicians even if it is a
money-losing proposition for the hospital because it allows the hospital to capture
(and thus pay for) the primary-care physicians’ referrals for hospital services.
113
When explaining why hospital ownership of physician organizations led to higher
total expenditures per patient, Robinson and Miller reasoned that higher
expenditures could be driven by increased use of higher-priced services, but it could
also be due to higher volume of services, or both.
114
A merger between hospitals and physicians may also allow the merged entity to
charge higher prices for certain outpatient services by exploiting the fact that
hospital-based services are typically reimbursed at higher rates than identical ser-
vices provided in physician-based locations.
115
This pricing practice is called the
site-of-service differential and is cited as one of the financial incentives driving
hospital-physician integration.
116
The site-of-service differential exists in Medicare
reimbursement policy and is replicated in the commercial market.
117
In Capps,
Dranove, and Ody’s research finding that vertical integration between hospitals and
physicians increased physician prices, they estimate that about a quarter of the 14%
price increase resulted from exploitation of reimbursement methodologies that
allow hospitals to charge facility fees for employed physicians.
118
In the study by
Neprash et al., the site-of-service differential explained part of the increase in prices
for outpatient services experienced by those areas experiencing the highest increase
in hospital-physician integration.
119
112
. See Afendulis & Kessler, supra note 33, at 17.
113
. ANN S. O’MALLEY, AMELIA M. BOND & ROBERT A. BERENSON., CTR. FOR STUDYING
HEALTH SYS. CHANGE, ISSUE BRIEF NO. 136, RISING HOSPITAL EMPLOYMENT OF PHYSICIANS:
BETTER QUALITY, HIGHER COSTS? 2 (2011).
114
. Robinson & Miller, supra note 93, at 1664, 1668.
115
. O’MALLEY ET AL., supra note 113, at 3; Capps et al., supra note 89, at 6.
116
. See Neprash et al., supra note 100, at 1933–34.
117
. See MEDICARE PAYMENT ADVISORY COMM’N., REPORT TO THE CONGRESS: MEDICARE
AND THE HEALTH CARE DELIVERY SYSTEM. 27 (2013), http://www.medpac.gov/docs/default
-source/reports/jun13_entirereport.pdf?sfvrsn=0 [https://perma.cc/WV78-5KDD] (describing
the site-of-service differential in Medicare payment policy); JAMES D. RESCHOVSKY &
CHAPIN WHITE, NAT’L INST. HEALTH CARE REFORM, RES. BRIEF NO. 16, LOCATION,
LOCATION, LOCATION: HOSPITAL OUTPATIENT PRICES MUCH HIGHER THAN COMMUNITY
SETTINGS FOR IDENTICAL SERVICES 1 (2014), http://nihcr.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/07/Research_Brief
_No._16.pdf [https://perma.cc/HE33-KAYK] (describing the site-of-service differential for
private payers).
118
. See Capps et al., supra note 89, at 4.
119
. Neprash et al., supra note 100, at 1937 (concluding that the increase in outpatient
prices was driven by both an increase in the integrated entity’s bargaining power and the
higher prices driven by the site-of-service differential).
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 75
C. Agency Problems and Consumer Choice
Hospital ownership of physician practices may exacerbate agency problems be-
tween physicians and patients. Agency problems arise between patients (the princi-
pals) and physicians (their agents) when physicians’ medical decisions on behalf of
their patients are influenced by the physicians’ financial incentives and practice
norms that may be at odds with the patients’ interests in obtaining the highest
quality care at the lowest price.
120
In the context of hospital services, the physician
both orders and performs the hospital service, thus driving demand not only for the
type of service but also for the particular facility at which the service will be
performed.
121
Theoretically, it is unclear what effect vertical integration of hospitals and
physicians may have on agency problems between physicians and patients. On the
one hand, common ownership could align the financial incentives between
hospitals and physicians, and thus improve care coordination and patient welfare.
122
However, hospital ownership of physicians could also create financial and other
incentives for the physician to refer to the owner-hospital or to increase the volume
or intensity of services ordered, rather than to choose the most cost-effective option
for the patient.
123
In a study that examined the impact of hospital-physician integration on the pa-
tient’s choice of hospital, Laurence Baker, M. Kate Bundorf, and Daniel Kessler
found empirical evidence that hospital ownership of physicians worsens the agency
problem between physicians and patients.
124
They found that “a hospital’s
ownership of an admitting physician dramatically increases the probability that the
physician’s patients will choose the owning hospital. . . . [P]atients are more likely
to choose a high-cost, low-quality hospital when their admitting physician’s
practice is owned by that hospital.”
125
Although they were unable to determine
whether, on net, the harms of vertical integration to patient welfare outweigh the
potential benefits, the authors concluded that “hospital/physician integration affects
patients’ hospital choices in a way that is inconsistent with their best interests.”
126
Even when providers have the right motives for integrating, when large
conglomerates gain market power, they tend to use it to command higher prices.
120
. Thomas L. Greaney, Economic Regulation of Physicians: A Behavioral Economics
Perspective, 53 ST. LOUIS U. L.J. 1189, 1199–2000 (2009); Paul A. Pautler & Michael G.
Vita, Hospital Market Structure, Hospital Competition, and Consumer Welfare: What Can
the Evidence Tell Us?, 10 J. CONTEMP. HEALTH L. & POL’Y 117, 120 (1994).
121
. See Peter J. Hammer, Antitrust Beyond Competition: Market Failures, Total Welfare,
and the Challenge of Intramarket Second-Best Tradeoffs, 98 MICH. L. REV. 849, 864–65
(2000).
122
. Laurence C. Baker, M. Kate Bundorf & Daniel P. Kessler, The Effect of
Hospital/Physician Integration on Hospital Choice 3 (Nat’l Bureau of Econ. Research,
Working Paper No. 21497, 2015).
123
. O'MALLEY ET AL., supra note 113, at 3.
124
. Baker et al., supra note 122, at 18.
125
. Id. at 17.
126
. Id. at 18–19.
76 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
Taken together, the empirical picture of vertical integration in health care suggests
some emerging themes: first, tighter forms of integration (e.g., acquisition versus
contractual affiliation) are associated with greater increases in prices; second, the
greater the market share of the hospital entity prior to consolidation, the more likely
the merger will have anticompetitive effects; and third, the harms to consumer
welfare go beyond higher prices and include incentives to refer patients to lower-
value facilities or higher-cost settings. In addition, there is a noted absence of
empirical data illustrating that vertically integrated health care systems improve
quality
127
or reliably generate cost savings through reduced utilization or improved
efficiency.
128
Although there may be limits on the generalizability of any one of the
studies, it is notable that all the data point in the same direction: that vertical health
care integration is associated with increased prices and higher per patient health
care spending.
III. THE CENTRAL ROLE OF STATES
Due to significant inefficiencies in the health care markets and the limits of
federal antitrust enforcement, states have an important role to play to complement
and support federal efforts to address the competitive threats of health care
integration. When market power abuses lead to higher prices and reductions in
quality and consumer choice, the primary remedy has been federal antitrust
enforcement. But while federal antitrust enforcement has a key role to play, it
cannot be the only weapon in the arsenal. First, given the rapid rate of collaboration
and consolidation in health care, the Federal Trade Commission and the
Department of Justice (the Antitrust Agencies) simply do not have the resources or
capacity to police all of the consolidation efforts under way throughout the
country.
129
Second, federal antitrust enforcement offers a powerful means of
preventing anticompetitive mergers and collaborations but has proven less
successful at balancing the pro- and anticompetitive effects of a proposed merger or
127
. J. Michael McWilliams, Michael E. Chernew, Alan M. Zaslavsky, Pasha Hamed &
Bruce E. Landon, Delivery System Integration and Health Care Spending and Quality for
Medicare Beneficiaries, 173 JAMA 1447, 1451–52 (2013) (“[S]pending was higher and
quality of care not better for [Medicare] beneficiaries assigned to larger hospital-based
groups than for those assigned to smaller physician groups, consistent with other studies of
physician-hospital consolidation. Although integration between physicians and hospitals
theoretically could support continuity during care transitions, readmission rates were highest
for hospital-based groups.”)
128
. Neprash et al., supra note 100, at 1937 (finding that “[c]onsistent with prior
research, physician-hospital integration was not associated with lower utilization, suggesting
that this form of provider consolidation has not led to gains in health care efficiency in recent
years through improved care coordination or management”).
129
. See Martin Gaynor, Competition Policy in Health Care Markets: Navigating the
Enforcement and Policy Maze, 33 HEALTH AFF. 1088, 1090 (2014); Greaney, supra note 39,
at 27; Clark C. Havighurst & Barak D. Richman, The Provider Monopoly Problem in Health
Care, 89 OR. L. REV. 847, 871 (2011).
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 77
correcting anticompetitive conduct following consolidation.
130
At a time when state
and federal governments are incentivizing vertical integration, and in which the
majority of health care markets in the United States are already highly
concentrated,
131
policy makers need more nuanced tools that they can deploy
throughout the country.
States are in a unique position to assist in this effort. First, state governments
oversee most of the regulation of insurance and health care within the state, which
will enable them to design new policies that complement existing regulatory struc-
tures. For instance, states could require payers to report all of their claims to a state
all-payer claims database (APCD)
132
to promote a better understanding of the
drivers of health care prices and provide federal antitrust agencies with valuable
information on markets throughout the state. Second, state actors may have existing
relationships with market stakeholders and a better understanding of market
dynamics in local health care markets, which can improve policy selection. Third,
state attorneys general have broader mandates than federal antitrust enforcement
agencies, which enable them to analyze the actions of health care providers and
insurer organizations through a consumer-protection or community-benefits lens,
broadening both the range of harms that are evaluated and potential enforcement
tools. Fourth, allowing states to monitor the impact of vertical integration in a wide
variety of market settings and try different regulatory approaches will speed
understanding of whether and under what circumstances the benefits of engaging in
vertical integration outweigh the risks. Finally, states can learn and exchange best
practices for developing APCDs and other regulatory models, easing the transition
for states with less experience.
133
Enhancing state and federal collaboration will
expand both the information and policy tools available to regulators aiming to
control health care costs, as well as allow available resources to be targeted to the
most appropriate entities and markets.
Increasing state involvement does create some risks. Most importantly, the
existence of relationships between market stakeholders and government officials
also risks agency capture and undue political influence over legislation and
regulation.
134
Many states have had well-intentioned policy initiatives, such as
130
. See Feinstein, supra note 49, at 15 (“Conduct remedies do not restore the
competitive status quo and raise several concerns.”); see also Greaney, supra note 39, at 12
(“A common misapprehension among legislators and policymakers is that antitrust law
provides a reliable counterforce to monopoly.”).
131
. See Cutler & Scott Morton, supra note 59, at 1966.
132
. Note, however, that in Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co., the Supreme Court held
that ERISA preempts state requirements for self-insured employer health plans to report to
APCDs. 136 S. Ct. 936 (2016). For further discussion, see infra notes 152–159 Error!
Bookmark not defined.and accompanying text.
133
. For instance, much of the legal, technical, and organizational infrastructure
necessary to implement an APCD could be transferrable across states.
134
. Regulatory or agency capture refers to “the phenomenon whereby regulated entities
wield their superior organizational capacities to secure favorable agency outcomes at the ex-
pense of the diffuse public.” Nicholas Bagley, Agency Hygiene, 89 TEX. L. REV. 1, 2 (2010).
Others have defined agency capture as “the control of agency policy decision making by a
78 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
certificate-of-need laws and licensure programs, co-opted by political and financial
interests.
135
In states with powerful health provider or insurance entities,
maintaining the independence of the APCD and oversight entities will be essential.
For example, the Massachusetts legislature created the Massachusetts Health Policy
Commission (HPC) as an independent state agency that resides in, but is not under
the control of, the Executive Office of Administration and Finance. HPC is “not
subject to the supervision and control of any other executive office, department,
commission, board, bureau, agency or political subdivision of the
commonwealth.”
136
Instead, an eleven-member Board of Commissioners with
guidance from a broadly representative advisory council govern the agency.
137
HPC
is funded solely by assessments taken from industry participants rather than from
state general revenue.
138
Given the wealth and political power of many insurance
companies and health care systems, state legislatures should carefully insulate any
oversight entities in terms of both governance and funding.
Further, state regulation without the requisite expertise and resources to engage
in continued oversight and enforcement risks exacerbating existing problems. Re-
cently, several states have offered immunity from state and federal antitrust laws to
vertically integrating health care entities, which drew criticism from federal
officials who argued the practice potentially immunizes anticompetitive behavior
and results in consumer harm if the states fail to appropriately oversee and regulate
the entities.
139
As successful oversight and enforcement measures often require
substantial financial, personnel, and knowledge-based resources, states must
carefully assess which policy options are best suited to their particular
circumstances. In addition, federal and state government officials should
collaborate and coordinate their efforts as much as possible to promote efficient
oversight and regulation of health care integration.
Vertical integration in health care continues to be encouraged by state and
federal government entities as a means to control overutilization and promote
quality. To maintain control over the amount of consolidation in the health care
market and guide entities in how to structure their integrations in ways that promote
competition, regulators need improved information on how integration may lead to
abuses of market power, greater guidance on the appropriate balance between pro-
and anticompetitive effects, and more nuanced oversight and regulatory tools. With
sub-population of individuals or organizations outside the agency.” Susan Webb Yackee,
Reconsidering Agency Capture During Regulatory Policymaking, in PREVENTING
REGULATORY CAPTURE: SPECIAL INTEREST INFLUENCE AND HOW TO LIMIT IT 292, 296
(Daniel Carpenter & David Moss eds., 2013).
135
. See, e.g., Frances H. Miller, Antitrust and Certificate of Need: Health Systems
Agencies, the Planning Act, and Regulatory Capture, 68 GEO. L.J. 873 (1979–1980).
136
. See MASS. GEN. LAWS ANN. ch. 6D, § 2(a) (West 2016). For a detailed discussion of
Certificate of Need statutes and regulations in health care, see ROBERT J. CIMASI, THE U.S.
HEALTHCARE CERTIFICATE OF NEED SOURCEBOOK (2005).
137
. Ch. 6D, § 2-4
138
. See id. § 2 (setting forth the structure of the Massachusetts Health Policy
Commission).
139
. Edith Ramirez, Antitrust Enforcement in Health Care—Controlling Costs,
Improving Quality, 371 NEW ENG. J. MED. 2245, 2246 (2014).
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 79
the limits of federal antitrust tools to address vertical integration in health care,
states are uniquely situated to manage the price and quality effects of the emerging
forms of health care combinations, but they must be cognizant of the political risks,
resources, and competencies necessary to take on such a role. As set forth in Part
IV, this federalized, “laboratory of the states” model allows jurisdictions to tailor
policies to the specifics of the state’s own health care markets.
IV. STATE OPTIONS TO ADDRESS THE DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD
Because of the limits of federal antitrust enforcement and of market forces to
discipline private health care prices, states have the opportunity to complement and
supplement federal efforts to address the potential harm to competition from
increased health care consolidation. The double-edged sword of health care
integration requires states to grapple with ways to balance the potential efficiency
benefits while controlling the price effects of consolidation. To do so, states can
encourage clinical integration, but with a quid pro quo that the integrating entities
must submit to price and quality oversight.
Part IV explores a range of policy options states can use to further these ends.
The strategies include: (A) all-payer claims databases; (B) antitrust enforcement
and immunity; (C) ACO certification; (D) rate-oversight authorities; (E) private
rate caps; and (F) provider rate regulation.
These policy options for state oversight of health care integration are explored in
order of least to most regulatory intervention in the market, which also generally
correlates to political difficulty. Although the best combination of these tools will
depend on the specific market and political dynamics in each particular state, as a
general matter, the more consolidated and concentrated a state’s health care market,
the more the state may have to rely on the stronger regulatory devices to curb rising
health care prices.
While states may pick and choose from this menu of policy options, three key
ingredients emerge for effective state oversight of vertical integration and private
price increases: (1) Information—oversight bodies must have access to detailed and
timely price, quality, and utilization claim data; (2) Independence—state oversight
bodies must be insulated from the powerful providers they oversee; (3) Regulatory
Authority—state oversight bodies must have the authority to enforce or impose
limits on providers’ prices when they become too high.
A. All-Payer Claims Databases
To evaluate the impact of integration on health care costs and quality, states
must first gain access to reliable data about their health care prices, quality of care,
and market dynamics. This information will inform the analysis of the role that
market leverage, as opposed to value, plays in setting negotiated health care prices.
Obtaining negotiated health care prices will not be an easy task. Private health
80 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
care prices are notoriously opaque and difficult to ascertain.
140
Different plans pay
the same provider different prices for the same service. Providers’ charges vary
wildly from each other for the same service in the same geographic areas.
141
Furthermore, nondisclosure agreements, trade secrets claims, and highly complex
billing mechanisms shroud health care prices in a veil of secrecy.
142
But states can
get around many of these barriers by requiring disclosure of the information to a
state entity.
143
About a third of all states currently require disclosure of health care claims to an
all-payer claims database (APCD).
144
APCDs are large-scale, state-run databases
that collect health care claims data and provider data from all payers in the state,
including private insurers, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program
(CHIP), self-insured employers, dental insurers, prescription drug plans, state
employee health plans, and others. Furthermore, several APCDs pair price and
quality data for providers.
145
States generally use APCDs to collect data on patient
demographics, diagnoses, services rendered, charges, payments, and procedure
codes.
146
According to the APCD Council, a nonprofit entity that monitors APCD
140
. Morgan A. Muir, Stephanie A. Alessi & Jaime S. King., Clarifying Costs: Can
Increased Price Transparency Reduce Healthcare Spending?, 4 WM. & MARY POL’Y REV.
319 (2013).
141
. See Elliott S. Fisher, David E. Wennberg, Thérèse A. Stukel, Daniel J. Gottlieb, F.L.
Lucas & Étoile L. Pinder, The Implications of Regional Variations in Medicare Spending.
Part 1: The Content, Quality, and Accessibility of Care, 138 ANNALS INTERNAL MED. 273,
273 (2003) [hereinafter Regional Variations in Medicare Spending Part 1]; Elliott S. Fisher,
David E. Wennberg, Thérèse A. Stukel, Daniel J. Gottlieb, F.L. Lucas & Étoile L. Pinder,
The Implications of Regional Variations in Medicare Spending. Part 2: Health Outcomes
and Satisfaction with Care, 138 ANNALS INTERNAL MED. 288 (2003) [hereinafter Regional
Variations in Medicare Spending Part 2].
142
. Muir et al., supra note 140, at 326.
143
. See id. But see Gobeille v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 136 S. Ct. 936 (2016) (finding
Vermont’s APCD reporting requirements for self-insured employers were preempted by
ERISA).
144
. Interactive State Report Map, ACPD COUNCIL, https://www.apcdcouncil.org
/state/map [https://perma.cc/P5Z4-S5DT] (showing eighteen states with APCDs). As of
October 15, 2015, the eighteen states that have enacted legislation to establish an APCD are
Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota,
New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia,
Washington, West Virginia. Id. The twenty states that that are seriously considering an
APCD are Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
South Carolina, Texas, and Wyoming. Id.
145
. The Basics of All-Payer Claims Databases: A Primer for States, THE ROBERT WOOD
JOHNSON FOUNDATION (2014), http://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/issue_briefs
/2014/rwjf409988 [https://perma.cc/7XSU-HJG9].
146
. Massachusetts also requires certain provider organizations to register with the state
and submit information on provider costs, charges, and services. The Center for Health
Information and Analysis collects and maintains large databases of provider and payer infor-
mation that policy makers and researchers can use to analyze market dynamics in the state.
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 81
creation, eighteen states have enacted legislation to create an APCD, with another
twenty states demonstrating a strong interest in doing so.
147
APCDs are often thought of as tools for promoting consumer price transpar-
ency,
148
but their functions go far beyond providing pricing information to consum-
ers. For example, by marrying claims data with quality assessments, APCDs can al-
low policy makers to monitor the impact of vertical integration on price and quality
under various market conditions. Given the experimental nature of ACOs, access to
data is essential to evaluating whether they can achieve their procompetitive goals
of promoting quality improvement and cost-saving efficiency, or whether their
potential anticompetitive effects outweigh any consumer benefit. For instance,
policy makers will need to know whether vertical integration in their market
changes provider referral patterns in ways that harm quality of care or patient
outcomes. With all the changes set in motion by the ACA, it is essential to be able
to learn from experience and adapt regulations quickly in response to shifting
market dynamics.
149
The collection of APCD data both underlies and informs all of the subsequent
policy options discussed below and should be a precursor to the selection of an ap-
proach to manage the double-edged sword of health care integration and consolida-
tion. Policy makers could use APCD data to implement policy incentives targeting
consumers, purchasers, providers, and payers. For instance, if a dominant provider
engaged in anticompetitive conduct to drive up prices to supracompetitive levels,
the state could consider bringing an antitrust enforcement action, implementing
some form of rate regulation, or finding ways to incentivize market entry.
While the creation of an APCD presents numerous opportunities and benefits,
doing so also raises significant challenges. Without question, the creation and
maintenance of any statewide database will require substantial financial support
and resources. However, with APCDs, obtaining a usable, standardized, and
complete set of data from various payers and providers poses the biggest challenge.
For example, all quality, price, and patient data must be converted to standardized
metrics and all patient data must be de-identified. Given the confidential nature of
the database, the state will also need to impose significant data-security measures.
States may also face additional challenges from providers and insurers claiming
that the pricing data constitutes a trade secret or is subject to a nondisclosure
agreement.
150
State legislatures can address many of these concerns directly by
requiring payers and providers to submit health care claims data in standardized
Hospital and Other Provider Data, CENTER FOR HEALTH INFORMATION AND ANALYSIS,
http://www.chiamass.gov/data-index/ [https://perma.cc/JQ9T-7V97].
147
. Interactive State Report Map, supra note 144.
148
. For examples of consumer facing tools available in Colorado, Maine, and New
Hampshire, see CO MEDICAL PRICE COMPARE, https://www.comedprice.org/#/home
[https://web.archive.org/web/20161014052429/https://www.comedprice.org/#/home] (CO
Medical Price Compare is limited to information on childbirth, knee replacement, and hip
replacement services); COMPAREMAINE: HEALTH COSTS & QUALITY, http://www
.comparemaine.org/ [https://perma.cc/9GQ8-SG3F]; Health Costs for Consumer, N.H.
HEALTHCOST, http://nhhealthcost.nh.gov/health-costs-consumers [https://perma.cc/5USX-9WA8].
149
. See Cutler, How Health Care Reform Must Bend the Cost Curve, supra note 6, at 1131–35.
150
. Muir et al., supra note 140, at 326.
82 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
formats to the state APCD and including a provision that exempts APCD reporting
requirements from nondisclosure agreements and trade secrets claims.
151
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court recently dealt a significant blow to state
APCDs in Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co.
152
The 6-2 opinion held that
the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) preempts state APCD
reporting requirements for self-funded employee health plans, depriving states of
essential information on health care utilization, pricing, and quality.
153
Nationally,
61% of workers with employer-based health insurance are in self-funded plans,
which represents a significant portion of the population state health policy makers
aim to target with healthcare reforms.
154
Moreover, individuals with employer-
based health insurance tend to be healthier than those covered by public payers, so
removing claims data for a majority of individuals with employer-based coverage
from the database can skew the data and undermine the accuracy of any policy
analysis performed using the data.
155
States seeking to obtain claims data for employees with self-insured employers
have three options after Gobeille.
156
First, states could gather and analyze the more
limited set of health care claims data by continuing to require APCD data from all
other types of payers, including fully insured employee-benefit plans, public
payers, and individual and small-group plans within and outside the exchanges, and
by encouraging self-insured employee health plans to submit information on a
voluntary basis.
157
Second, despite being less efficient and more expensive than
obtaining the data from payers, states could require health care providers to submit
the missing data from self-insured employees.
158
Finally, states could request that
the federal government, via the Departments of Labor and Health and Human
151
. Such requirements could be imposed via legislation, state agency regulation, or, in
the case of trade secrets, through a judicial opinion.
152
. 136 S. Ct. 936 (2016).
153
. Id. at 946–47. For a good discussion of the case and what is at stake for APCDs, see
Nicholas Bagley & Christopher Koller, Transparency and the Supreme Court—Can
Employers Refuse To Disclose How Much They Pay for Health Care?, 373 NEW ENG. J.
MED. 1 (2015).
154
. THE KAISER FAMILY FOUND. & HEALTH RESEARCH & EDUC. TRUST, EMPLOYER
HEALTH BENEFITS ANNUAL SURVEY 2016, § 10 (2016).
155
. Amicus Brief to the Second Circuit on Behalf of Harvard Law School Center for
Health Law & Policy at 20, Gobeille, 136 S. Ct. 936 (No. 14-181).
156
. Erin Fuse Brown and Jaime King, The Consequences of Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual
Ins. Co. for Health Care Cost Containment, HEALTH AFF. BLOG (Mar. 10 2016),
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2016/03/10/the-consequences-of-gobeille-v-liberty-mutual-for-health
-care-cost-control/ [https://perma.cc/B7P7-HMUB].
157
. Voluntary data submission has some precedent. Virginia has implemented an
entirely voluntary APCD, and four other states use voluntary data collection into databases
similar to APCDs. See VA. CODE ANN. § 32.1-276.7:1 (Supp. 2016); see also APCD
Council, supra note 144.
158
. See Nicholas Bagley, The Supreme Court’s Wrongheaded Decision in Gobeille,
INCIDENTAL ECONOMIST (Mar. 3, 2016, 11:50 AM),
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress
/the-supreme-courts-wrongheaded-decision-in-gobeille/ [https://perma.cc/Q87P-5G4X].
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 83
Services, mandate collection of relevant claims data from ERISA plans.
159
A
federal requirement could standardize data for inclusion in all state APCDs, which
could facilitate data analysis and comparison between states.
A final challenge is that creation of an APCD requires significant thought
regarding the amount and scope of data disclosure. Several antitrust enforcers and
academics have expressed concerns that, depending on the market dynamics,
widespread disclosure of all health care price and quality data could lead to
increased prices or collusion.
160
Determining which data to disclose, to whom, and
in which market, will require substantial analysis and oversight, which again
requires resources.
Despite these numerous challenges, states need comprehensive health care price,
utilization, and quality data to inform their health care cost-containment policies.
Thus, states must strive to collect and access this data notwithstanding these chal-
lenges. Information forms the basis of any effective state action to address to the
competitive risks of health care integration and consolidation.
B. Antitrust Enforcement and Immunity
Having reliable data will greatly facilitate state decision making on when to in-
centivize or curtail health care integration. States can manipulate the use of state
and federal antitrust laws to either vigorously challenge anticompetitive conduct or
immunize certain actors from prosecution under the laws via the state action
doctrine. A state with highly concentrated health care markets can actively enforce
state and federal antitrust laws to prevent proposed integration from harming
competition. Alternatively, states can encourage integration by granting state action
immunity from state and federal antitrust laws to integrated health care entities via
legislation or Certificates of Public Advantage (COPAs).
161
Regardless of a state’s
chosen path, vigorous oversight and significant data monitoring will be essential to
controlling costs and preserving quality in the face of increased concentration.
1. Antitrust Enforcement
States can challenge anticompetitive conduct by enforcement of the federal or its
159
. The majority in Gobeille, and Justice Breyer in his concurrence, suggested federally
mandated data collection as solution to replace the lost APCD data from ERISA self-funded
plans. Gobeille, 136 S. Ct. 936, 949–50 (2016) (Breyer, J., concurring). For an example of a
state-based proposal for a federal requirement for the submission of health care claims data
by ERISA plans, see National Academy for State Health Policy, Comment on Department of
Labor Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Sept. 20, 2016), https://www.regulations.gov
/contentStreamer?documentId=EBSA-2016-0010-0033&attachmentNumber=1&disposition
=attachment&contentType=pdf [https://perma.cc/VF3U-HL5X].
160
. See, e.g., Foote & Varanini, supra note 75, at 891; Muir et al., supra note 140, at
354.
161
. See ROBERT A. BERENSON & RANDALL R. BOVBJERG, URBAN INST., CERTIFICATES OF
PUBLIC ADVANTAGE: CAN THEY ADDRESS PROVIDER MARKET POWER? 4 (2015), http://www
.urban.org/research/publication/certificates-public-advantage [https://perma.cc/V68Q-J7RM].
84 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
own state antitrust laws. At the federal level, the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act
prohibit anticompetitive mergers, collaborations, and conduct.
162
In addition, forty-
nine states have their own antitrust laws that promote and protect competition.
163
Given the market-specific information required to bring an antitrust enforcement
challenge, state officials are well positioned to identify integration proposals that
threaten to harm competition. State attorneys general can challenge mergers and
collaborations and bring enforcement actions both independently and in
conjunction with a federal action. Joining with the federal antitrust agencies to
bring an action can be an especially effective means for states to leverage both the
expertise and resources of the federal agencies as well as their own knowledge of
existing market dynamics.
164
State attorneys general, like the federal antitrust agencies, generally have the op-
portunity to review a proposed integration, which could be a formal merger or a
looser collaboration, both at the time of its creation and on an ongoing basis. While
the antitrust analysis typically differs between horizontal mergers, vertical mergers,
and collaborations, the FTC generally considers similar factors when addressing
health care provider integrations.
165
At the time of a proposed integration, antitrust
enforcers initially consider whether a proposed merger or collaboration is per se il-
legal.
166
Initial concerns for enforcers include (1) whether the integration could
create potential efficiencies such as cost savings, quality improvement, and
transactional efficiencies; (2) whether the proposed integration is a legitimate
attempt to achieve those efficiencies or a means to enhance market power; and (3)
whether the efficiency goals could be obtained through a means that poses less of a
threat to competition.
167
For an existing entity, enforcers consider whether the
current conduct of the entity is on balance harming competition. If on initial review
the state finds that its antitrust concerns are not satisfied, it can engage in further
investigation.
Given the potential benefits of vertical integration in health care, the majority of
proposed integrations should survive initial review and not be challenged as per se
illegal. Once a bona fide integration is established, antitrust enforcers will review
162
. 15 U.S.C. §§ 1–7, 12–18 (2012).
163
. Pennsylvania, which is the only state without a separate antitrust law, enforces
competition under its Unfair and Deceptive Practices statute. 73 PA. STAT. AND CONS. STAT.
ANN. § 201-1 (West Supp. 2016).
164
. See, e.g., Saint Alphonsus Med. Ctr.-Nampa Inc. v. St. Luke’s Health Sys., Ltd., 778
F.3d 775, 791 (9th Cir. 2015).
165
. See Feinstein, supra note 49, at 3–5 (explaining the FTC’s approach to enforcement
in health care markets); Statement of Antitrust Enforcement Policy Regarding Accountable
Care Organizations Participating the Medicare Shared Savings Program, supra note 49; FTC
ET AL., HORIZONTAL MERGER GUIDELINES, supra note 49; FTC ET AL., ANTITRUST
GUIDELINES FOR COLLABORATIONS AMONG COMPETITORS, supra note 49, at 3.
166
. See Feinstein, supra note 49, at 4.
167
. See Ramirez, supra note 139, at 2246. Although, alliances and other collaborations
have not yet been challenged on antitrust grounds; the FTC has expressed concerns that such
collaborations could also harm competition. See also Feinstein, supra note 49.
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 85
the integration under a “rule of reason” standard.
168
As the Director of the FTC’s
Bureau of Competition Deborah Feinstein pointed out at the Fifth National
Accountable Care Organization Summit in June 2014, “the rule of reason analysis
applied to provider collaborations generally follows the same framework contained
in the Horizontal Merger Guidelines.”
169
The rule of reason analysis compares the
state of competition with and without the proposed integration and requires the
parties to define the relevant product and geographic markets, identify the market
participants, calculate market shares and concentration, consider the likelihood of
market expansion, and determine whether any efficiencies are likely to result.
170
Antitrust enforcers will further examine whether the proposed integration will
likely harm competition by increasing “the ability or incentive profitably to raise
price above or reduce output, quality, service, or innovation below what likely
would prevail” in its absence.
171
Rule of reason analysis is flexible and market
specific in its inquiry, and no one factor is dispositive.
172
The most challenging question facing antitrust enforcers in the case of vertical
integration is whether the purported procompetitive effects of the integration will
outweigh any anticompetitive effects. Before antitrust enforcers will credit any pro-
competitive efficiencies, the health care entities must demonstrate that the claimed
efficiencies are sufficiently cognizable, explicit, and require the proposed level of
integration (merger, joint venture, or affiliation) to produce the procompetitive ef-
fects.
173
Doing so has proven extremely difficult.
174
For instance, the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals found in Saint Alphonsus Medical Center-Nampa, Inc. v. St.
Luke’s Health System that the quality benefits obtained from sharing electronic
medical records, standardizing treatment protocols, and integrating physicians
across practices did not require a formal merger; that is, they were not “merger
specific.”
175
Although the
Ninth Circuit decided St. Luke’s based purely on the
anticompetitive potential of the proposed horizontal merger of primary care
physician practices in Nampa, Idaho, the principle that a merger was not necessary
168
. See FTC ET AL., HORIZONTAL MERGER GUIDELINES, supra note 49, at 15–17; see
also FTC ET AL., ANTITRUST GUIDELINES FOR COLLABORATIONS AMONG COMPETITORS, supra
note 49, at 3–6.
169
. Feinstein, supra note 49, at 4.
170
. Id.; see also FTC ET AL., HORIZONTAL MERGER GUIDELINES, supra note 49, at 15–
19; FTC ET AL., ANTITRUST GUIDELINES FOR COLLABORATIONS AMONG COMPETITORS, supra
note 49, at 17–21.
171
. FTC, ANTITRUST GUIDELINES FOR COLLABORATIONS AMONG COMPETITORS, supra
note 49, at 4.
172
. See id. at 4.
173
. See Feinstein, supra note 49, at 9 (stating that the claimed efficiencies must be
merger specific, explicit, and cognizable).
174
. See Tasneem Chipty & Asta Sendonaris, Economists’ Perspective on the Efficiency
Defense in Provider Consolidations: What Works, What Doesn’t Work, and What We Still
Don’t Know, 19 AHLA CONNECTIONS 16, 17 (2015) (stating “no provider has convinced an
antitrust enforcer that the claimed efficiencies are cognizable and sufficient to offset” the po-
tential harms to competition).
175
. 778 F.3d 775, 791 (9th Cir. 2015).
86 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
to achieve the purported efficiencies would also apply in the analysis of a vertical
merger.
The complexity of vertical health care integrations will significantly complicate
antitrust analysis.
176
Vertical integrations can harm competition in upstream and
downstream markets, as well as in entirely different markets.
177
For example,
Health First, an integrated delivery system in Brevard, Florida, owns and operates
health plans, hospitals, physician groups, urgent care centers, outpatient centers,
rehabilitation facilities, diagnostic and treatment centers, and a network of fitness
and wellness services.
178
In these cases, it will not be sufficient to analyze only the
impact of the integration in each market in isolation, but instead antitrust enforcers
and courts should analyze the more global impact of the integration on the
particular health care market. This makes conducting the competitive effects
analysis significantly more complex.
179
Further, state enforcers may have to
consider how to balance procompetitive effects in one market, such as primary
care, with anticompetitive effects in an altogether different market, such as surgical
procedures, or whether quality improvements for certain services outweigh across
the board price increases.
180
All of this will require extensive amounts of time,
resources, data, and analysis to accomplish in any meaningful way.
However, once a state has decided that a proposed or existing integration is anti-
competitive, it must decide upon a remedy. The goal of any antitrust enforcement
action is to restore the opportunity for the market to function without the illegal re-
straints on competition.
181
Antitrust enforcers generally have two kinds of equitable
remedies to choose from: structural and conduct remedies. Depending on the
timing of the action and the market conditions, states can use structural and conduct
remedies alone or in combination to address anticompetitive concerns arising from
greater consolidation in health care.
a. Structural Remedies
Antitrust enforcers use structural remedies to prevent a proposed merger, to
undo a recent merger, or to require divestiture or other structural change in order to
176
. See STEVEN C. SALOP & DANIEL P. CULLEY, POTENTIAL COMPETITIVE EFFECTS OF
VERTICAL MERGERS: A HOW-TO GUIDE FOR PRACTITIONERS 5–6 (2014).
177
. Id.
178
. See Lisa Schenker, Competitor Sues Florida System Health First, MODERN HEALTH
CARE (Sept. 2, 2015), http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20150902/NEWS
/150909986?utm_source=modernhealthcare&utm_medium=email&utm_content=externalURL
&utm_campaign=am [https://perma.cc/5XUK-TB8L].
179
. See SALOP & CULLEY, supra note 176, at 6.
180
. While historically the courts have not permitted benefits in one market to excuse
harms in another, the Horizontal Merger Guidelines do provide some indication that the
Antitrust Agencies may balance cross-market effects when deciding whether to prosecute a
merger. See, e.g., Philadelphia Nat’l Bank v. United States, 374 U.S. 321, 370 (1963); FTC
ET AL., HORIZONTAL MERGER GUIDELINES, supra note 49, at 30 n.14.
181
. See Feinstein, supra note 49, at 14.
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 87
restore competition.
182
In the instance that a vertically integrated entity has not yet
or only recently formed, structural remedies offer a relatively straightforward
means of restoring competition by dissolving the integration. Given the level of
concentration in both the health care insurance and provider markets, antitrust
enforcers have expressed a strong preference for structural remedies,
183
as
preventing anticompetitive harms prior to consolidation has proven more successful
than attempting to address them after the entities have fully integrated.
184
While structural remedies are frequently used to prevent horizontal mergers,
their use in vertical mergers has rarely occurred because antitrust enforcers
generally view vertical integration as procompetitive.
185
However, given the
evidence that vertical health care integration can increase provider market leverage
and prices, antitrust enforcers should consider structural remedies, both when
evaluating proposed vertical integrations and when an existing consolidated entity
continues to amass or abuse its market power.
186
In the case of proposed vertical integrations, antitrust enforcers should consider
structural remedies in three instances. First, they should be especially wary of pro-
posed integrations that appear overinclusive in the number of hospitals and/or phy-
sicians participating in the integration, as this may signal an attempt to gain market
power in ways that are unnecessary to the efficiency goals of vertical integration.
187
Second, in instances where the integration would involve a significant number of
providers in a particular area, questions arise regarding whether those providers are
eligible to see patients independently from the entity or subject to exclusivity
requirements and whether the integration will substantially limit consumer choice.
Third, vertical integrations that consolidate market power across several different
provider markets can create significant leverage in negotiating reimbursements,
such that the entity becomes a “must have” and threatens the ability of other
organizations to compete.
188
182
. Id. at 14–16.
183
. Id. at 14.
184
. See Stephen Tenn, The Price Effects of Hospital Mergers: A Case Study of the
Sutter-Summit Transaction 23 (Fed. Trade Comm’n, Working Paper No. 293, 2008).
185
. Edith Ramirez, Comm’r, Fed. Trade. Comm’n, Presentation to Am. Bar Ass’n at the
Antitrust Fall Forum: FTC Behavioral Remedies (Nov. 17, 2011),
http://www.americanbar.org
/content/dam/aba/publications/antitrust_law/at311550_fall_forum_panel_5.authcheckdam.pdf
[https://perma.cc/D5VF-CNXL].
186
. See, e.g., ANN HOLLINGSHEAD, JAIME KING, BRENT D. FULTON, JOSHUA RUSHAKOFF,
& RICHARD M. SCHEFFLER, STATE ACTIONS TO PROMOTE AND RESTRAIN COMMERCIAL
ACCOUNTABLE CARE ORGANIZATIONS 17 (2015).
187
. Statement of Antitrust Enforcement Policy Regarding Accountable Care
Organizations Participating the Medicare Shared Savings Program, supra note 49.
188
. For a more theoretical description of how amassing market power across a range of
markets will increase leverage in negotiations with a single purchaser, see generally Gregory
S. Vistnes & Yianis Sarafidis, Cross-Market Hospital Mergers: A Holistic Approach, 79
ANTITRUST L.J. 253 (2013); Thibaud Vergé, Portfolio Effects and Merger Control: Full-Line
Forcing as an Entry-Deterrence Strategy (Ctr. Mkt. Pub. Org., CMPO Working Paper Series
No. 02/046, 2003).
88 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
Despite the oft-repeated reminder that mergers, once consummated, are difficult,
if not impossible, to unwind, the highly concentrated nature of U.S. health care
markets suggests antitrust enforcers should seriously consider using structural
remedies to break down some of the market leverage some providers have amassed
over the last several decades.
189
Over the last several decades, health care entities
have come to rely on the fact that mergers, once consummated, will not be undone.
As a result, health care entities have strong incentives to consolidate, even in the
face of increased monitoring or limitations via conduct remedies, because the
limitations are only temporary, but the gain in market power is permanent. In many
markets, health care provider organizations have systematically accumulated
market power and abused it in ways that have significantly increased costs and
eliminated competitors. Such abuses of power could result in anticompetitive
conduct claims under Section 1 of the Sherman Act or monopolization and
attempted monopolization claims under Section 2 of the Sherman Act.
190
Antitrust
enforcers have the authority to break this market power down in two ways: division
of a larger entity into several smaller entities
191
or required divestitures in certain
geographic regions.
192
The most prominent example of division of an existing
entity into smaller ones occurred in 1983 when the Department of Justice
successfully litigated its case against AT&T, resulting in the divestiture of several
“Baby Bells.”
193
Assistant Attorney General William Baxter created the “Bell
Doctrine” to prevent local telephone service providers from leveraging their legally
acquired monopolies in local markets to monopolize the national long distance
market.
194
While the Bell Doctrine was designed for regulated monopolies, many of
its principles can be analogized to dominant health care organizations.
195
A
successful state or federal antitrust challenge resulting in divestitures, or other
189
. Antitrust enforcers have rarely won monopolization or attempted monopolization
claims under the Sherman Act; a major victory of this kind could substantially quell anti-
competitive behavior for some time.
190
. Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1–2 (2012).
191
. See generally, Paul L. Joskow & Roger G. Noll, The Bell Doctrine: Applications in
Telecommunications, Electricity, and Other Network Industries, 51 STAN. L. REV. 1249 (1999).
192
. See Press Release, FTC Requires Community Health Systems, Inc. To Divest Two
Hospitals as a Condition of Acquiring Rival Hospital Operator, FED. TRADE COMM’N, (Jan.
22, 2014), https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2014/01/ftc-requires-community-
health-systems-inc-divest-two-hospitals [https://perma.cc/DPN5-XG8N]; Virgil Dickson,
Community Health Systems to Spin Off 38 Hospitals, Shift Focus to Larger Markets,
MODERN HEALTHCARE (Aug. 3, 2015),
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20150803/NEWS
/150809993 [https://perma.cc/QV6Q-4PU4].
193
. United States v. Western Electric Co., 569 F. Supp. 990 (D.D.C. 1983) (modifying
the final judgment in that case, and terminating United States v. AT&T).
194
. William F. Baxter, Conditions Creating Antitrust Concerns, with Vertical
Integration by Regulated Industries—“For Whom the Bell Doctrine Tolls,” 52 ANTITRUST
L.J. 243, 243–47 (1983).
195
. A full explication of how this theory could apply to health care entities is beyond
this scope of this paper, but we feel that antitrust enforcers should begin to consider whether
a structural remedy could be useful in particular instances.
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 89
structural remedies dividing the entity into smaller parts, would serve as a strong
deterrent to other entities.
In sum, state antitrust enforcers should use structural remedies to prevent poten-
tially anticompetitive collaborations and mergers from existing, and to break up
those integrated entities that systematically amass and abuse market power.
b. Conduct Remedies
The majority of vertical integrations, however, are unlikely to require structural
remedies, as they will present substantial procompetitive effects that are not so
clearly outweighed by potential harm to competition. In these instances, conduct
remedies are more frequently used to curb anticompetitive behaviors. State and fed-
eral antitrust enforcers have typically used conduct remedies to address anti-
competitive concerns arising from vertical mergers and joint ventures; the agencies
believed that conduct remedies would enable an entity to gain the procompetitive
benefits of the vertical integration while still restricting any potential
anticompetitive conduct.
196
Conduct remedies can be used in two ways to regulate the anticompetitive
harms that may arise from vertical integration. First, conduct remedies provide a
means to limit anticompetitive behavior in a health care entity that has obtained a
significant amount of market power without requiring it to divest portions of its
business in ways that may compromise patient care.
197
Second, for entities that are
integrating to create an ACO or other form of integrated delivery system, conduct
remedies offer a tool to protect competition in ways that are tailored to the concerns
of a particular market, while still enabling providers the opportunity to achieve the
desired procompetitive effects of clinical integration.
The use of vertical integration and ACOs to control costs and improve quality in
health care is still largely experimental. Like any experiment, the model will
require iterative refinement and oversight to improve its results. Conduct remedies
196
. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, ANTITRUST DIV., POLICY GUIDE TO MERGER REMEDIES 12–13
(2011). Some common behavioral remedies in vertical mergers include firewalls, non-
discrimination and fair dealing restrictions. See Ramirez, supra note 185.
197
. See Opinion of the Comm’n on Remedy, In re Evanston Northwestern Healthcare
Corp., No. 9315 (Apr. 28, 2008), https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cases
/2008/04/080428commopiniononremedy.pdf [https://perma.cc/4UD6-N4A9]. Instead of
requiring divestiture, the FTC allowed the merged hospitals to establish separate contracting
teams to negotiate with health plans and gave health plans the option to negotiate with the
hospitals separately or jointly. At the time, the FTC’s reasoning behind this conduct remedy
was the “unique circumstances of the case,” including that the hospitals had consummated
their merger seven years earlier, significant integration had already occurred, and that
divestiture could risk patient safety at Highland Park. See Opinion of the Comm’n at 89–91,
In re Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Corp., No. 9315 (Aug. 6, 2007),
https://www.ftc.gov
/sites/default/files/documents/cases/2007/08/070806opinion.pdf [https://perma.cc/4ACG-
ZEFF]. To qualify this, however, the FTC has since rejected these sort of conduct remedies
and now uses structural remedies.
90 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
permit this iterative process to continue to maximize the benefits of integration,
while minimizing the harm to competition. For example, depending on the
concerns in a particular market, antitrust enforcers could impose direct price caps,
limits on total health care expenditures, limits on contract provisions,
198
requirements to preserve existing services, prohibitions on employment restrictions,
and limits on further acquisitions on health care providers.
But using conduct remedies effectively is challenging. Historically, the antitrust
agencies have not favored the use of conduct remedies to control the
anticompetitive effects of proposed horizontal mergers or collaborations.
199
Their
logic is relevant to vertical integration as well. First, unlike structural remedies,
conduct remedies do not restore the status quo with respect to competition.
200
Instead, they provide restrictions and oversight over the newly integrated entity,
which are often inferior substitutes for competition between independent
providers.
201
For instance, direct price caps have been used to control cost increases
following a merger, but it is not clear if the price caps are higher than what a
competitive market would permit.
202
Further, conduct remedies often focus on
price, but they are unable to take account of other impacts of competition like
quality improvement and innovation.
203
Second, conduct remedies are often
difficult to enforce and have high administrative costs.
204
Enforcing conduct
remedies requires the enforcement agency to either oversee enforcement itself or
hire a third party to monitor the entity, both of which require substantial resources.
In some instances, enforcement can be so expensive and burdensome that the
remedy can be self-defeating. Finally, conduct remedies are generally time-limited,
which begs the question of what happens when the consent decree ends. Health
care entities may find it financially rewarding to consolidate and accept the conduct
remedies and oversight in the short term to obtain greater market leverage in the
future.
In comparison to their federal counterparts, state attorneys general may be better
positioned and more willing to use conduct remedies. State officials will be more
familiar with local stakeholders and market dynamics, and they may be more
willing to engage in conduct oversight than to litigate a merger challenge. For
instance, the Pennsylvania Attorney General has successfully negotiated three
consent decrees since 2011 with Geisinger Health System.
205
The most recent
decree, involving Geisinger’s acquisition of Lewiston Health Care Foundation,
198
. For example, prohibiting anti-tiering/anti-steering provisions, most favored nation
clauses, all-or-nothing provisions, and exclusive contracting requirements.
199
. See Feinstein, supra note 49, at 14–15.
200
. Id. at 15.
201
. See id.
202
. See id.
203
. See id.
204
. See id.
205
. Ober Kaler, Recent State Attorney General Merger Enforcement: Charting a
Different Path from the Feds – or Not?, LEXOLOGY (Oct. 29, 2014),
http://www.lexology.com/library
/detail.aspx?g=a2b2048f-475b-468f-9224-96d6e5dcef32 [https://perma.cc/NFG9-W76A].
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 91
required caps on price increases and prohibited most-favored-nation and anti-
tiering provisions.
206
In Massachusetts, the then-Attorney General, Martha Coakley, negotiated an ex-
tensive consent decree with Partners Healthcare conditioning its acquisition of
South Shore Hospital and two Hallmark hospitals on several factors including (1)
caps on price increases and total health care expenditures; (2) component
contracting, which permits health plans to contract with all or some of Partners’s
four major components; (3) limitations on Partners’s ability to contract with payers
on behalf of affiliated providers; (4) preservation of existing services; and (5)
Attorney General approval for any further acquisitions.
207
The Partners consent
decree was ultimately rejected after substantial opposition from the Massachusetts
Health Policy Commission (HPC),
208
which estimated that the merger would result
in approximately forty million dollars in increased health care expenditures per
year and Partners having more discharges than the next four largest competitors in
the state combined.
209
HPC’s impact on the outcome of the Partners merger
demonstrates the importance of states having readily available access to price,
quality, and utilization data for analysis. If the financial impact of the proposed
Partners acquisition had not been so significant, HPC would have been well-suited
to oversee the merger and the conditions of the consent decree. Few states have an
agency that has the data, analytical tools, authority, and resources that HPC does to
monitor an actor’s health care system and its costs. Although it has only been in
existence for three years, HPC has already played a large role in shaping the future
of health care in Massachusetts, and its role in antitrust enforcement will continue
to develop. Other states interested in regulating health care costs should follow
HPC’s lead, using its progress and setbacks as guidance for policy design.
Overall, antitrust enforcement is an essential tool for states to curb increases in
health care costs driven by abuses of provider and payer market power. But it can
be too blunt or unwieldy an instrument to strike the delicate balance needed to
206
. Pennsylvania v. Geisinger Health Sys. Found., No. 1:13-CV-02647-YK (M.D. Pa.
Oct. 28, 2013).
207
. Memorandum of the Commonwealth of Mass. in Support of Entry of Final
Judgment, Commonwealth v. Partners Healthcare Sys., Inc., No. SUCV2014-2033BLS
(Mass. Super. Ct. June 24, 2014), http://www.mass.gov/ago/docs/press/2014/memo-in-
support.pdf [https://perma.cc
/4G64-37U5].
208
. The Massachusetts Health Policy Commission (HPC) is an independent state agency
created to monitor health care costs; develop policies to reduce overall health care costs and
maintain quality; and provide objective, data-driven analyses of specific provider
transactions. See MASS. GEN. LAWS ANN. ch. 6D, § 2 (West 2016). For further discussion of
the Massachusetts HPC, see infra Parts IV.C–IV.D.
209
. Memorandum of Decision and Order on Joint Motion for Entry of Amended Final
Judgment by Consent at 27, Commonwealth v. Partners Healthcare Sys., Inc., No.
SUCV2014-02033-BLS2 (Mass. Super. Ct. Jan. 29, 2015),
http://www.mass.gov/ago/docs/press/2015
/partners-memo-of-decision-and-order.pdf [https://perma.cc/HT86-849H] (estimating that
total medical spending would increase by more than $38.5 million to $49 million per year).
92 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
promote beneficial integration in health care while preventing providers and payers
from acquiring too much market power. In some instances, legislation may be
preferable to conduct remedies for behavior that states wish to curb across all
actors, like all-or-nothing provisions or most-favored-nation clauses. If enforcers
fear eliminating procompetitive efficiencies, they may opt to delay enforcement in
ways that can cause lasting harm to competition. Likewise, if used too aggressively,
the threat of antitrust enforcement could chill integration efforts.
2. State Action Immunity and Certificates of Public Advantage
In some instances, state and federal governments may wish to alleviate that
chilling effect of antitrust law by signaling to health care entities that they favor
promoting integration over protecting competition. The courts have granted states
the ability to regulate the market in ways that promote other policy goals even if
those ways may harm competition.
210
In Parker v. Brown, the Supreme Court
granted states the ability to offer state action immunity, which would displace the
antitrust laws in favor of public supervision, so long as their actions did not unduly
burden interstate commerce or violate the Constitution.
211
States seeking to exempt
nonsovereign private actors from state and federal antitrust enforcement must
demonstrate that the exemption arises from a “clearly articulated and affirmatively
expressed . . . state policy” and that the policy is “actively supervised by the
State.”
212
States can grant non-sovereign entities immunity through a range of
actions including direct legislation, agency action, or by granting a certificate of
public advantage (COPA). Currently, thirteen states have statutes authorizing the
state to grant a COPA or state action immunity.
213
It is unclear whether state action immunity has successfully promoted beneficial
integration while protecting competition. In recent years, use of state action
immunity has come under significant scrutiny, especially in health care, as several
210
. See Phillip Areeda, Antitrust Immunity for “State Action” After Lafayette, 95 HARV.
L. REV. 435, 436 (1981).
211
. Parker v. Brown, 317 U.S. 341 (1943); see also Areeda, supra note 210, at 436 n.5.
212
. N.C. Bd. of Dental Exam’rs v. FTC, 135 S. Ct. 1101, 1110 (2015). For a more in-
depth discussion of North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC, see Marie Forney,
Note, North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC: Aligning Antitrust Law with
Commerce Clause Jurisprudence Through a Natural Shift of State-Federal Balance of
Power, 92 Ind. L.J. 365 (2016).
213
. State statutes authorizing COPAs include the Idaho Health Planning Act, IDAHO
CODE ANN. § 39-4903 (2011); the Kansas Health Care Provider Cooperation Act, KAN.
STAT. ANN. §§ 65-6801 to -6809 (2002); the Maine Hospital Cooperation Act, ME. REV.
STAT. ANN. tit. 22, § 1844 (Supp. 2015); MISS. CODE. ANN. § 41-9-307 (West 2007); the
Montana Health & Safety Code, MONT. CODE ANN. § 50-4-603 (2015); the Nebraska Health
Care Facility-Provider Act, NEB. REV. STAT. ANN. §§ 71-7701 to -7711 (LexisNexis 2014);
the New York Public Health Law, N.Y. COMP. CODES R. & REGS. tit. 10, § 83-2 (2014); the
North Carolina Hospital Cooperation Act, N.C. GEN. STAT. ANN. § 131E-192.4 (West 2010);
the South Carolina Health Care Cooperation Act, S.C. CODE ANN. § 44-7-530 (2002); TENN.
CODE ANN. § 68-11-1303 (2013); TEX. HEALTH & SAFETY CODE ANN. § 314.002 (West
2016); VA. CODE ANN. § 15.2-5384.1 (2012); and WIS. STAT. ANN. § 150.85 (West 2016).
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 93
states had granted immunity without proper articulation of state purpose or
supervision.
214
Robert Berenson and Randall Bovbjerg performed an extensive case
study of a COPA granted in North Carolina that enabled Mission Health System
(“Mission”) in Asheville to acquire its major rival, St. Joseph’s Health System.
215
North Carolina granted Mission a COPA in exchange for an agreement to a “quasi-
regulatory” regime that controlled Mission’s overall profit margins, its average
inpatient and outpatient costs, and the share of primary physicians it could
employ.
216
After analyzing years of data, the researchers were unable to conclude
that the COPA effectively counteracted the loss of competition in the area, but they
did find that the model had some successes and with modifications “a COPA-like
approach could provide a useful complement to antitrust enforcement in addressing
market power.”
217
If carefully limited and executed properly, a COPA may offer a state several
benefits over antitrust enforcement alone. First, it could give states the ability to
experiment with vertical integration in health care in ways that attempt to balance
the benefits of clinical integration with the risks to competition. Second, protection
from antitrust prosecution offers health care entities further incentive to submit to
data reporting and monitoring that can provide essential information on the impact
of vertical integration in different market conditions. Such data would also enable
states to monitor the impact of various forms of antitrust immunity on price or
utilization as a result of a merger over time. Finally, properly executed state action
immunity could offer the opportunity to closely monitor and regulate far more
health care entities than federal enforcement agencies could cover alone and for
longer periods of time than conduct remedies.
But the state must have a clearly defined regulatory body assigned to monitor
and regulate the entities, as well as the financial and personnel resources to do so.
A COPA that grants antitrust immunity without appropriate oversight risks
significant harm to consumers. In fact, federal antitrust enforcement officials have
recently raised significant concerns about whether state action immunity may do
more harm than good.
218
Edith Ramirez, Chairwoman of the FTC, expressed
concerns that in some states the grant of antitrust immunity in an effort to promote
collaboration and integration “betrays a misunderstanding of the crucial role that
214
. See, e.g., N.C. Bd. of Dental Exam’rs, 135 S. Ct. at 1115 (finding North Carolina did
not sufficiently supervise the Board of Dental Examiners); FTC v. Phoebe Putney Health
Sys., Inc., 133 S. Ct. 1003 (2013).
215
. See BERENSON & BOVBJERG, supra note 161, at 8.
216
. See id. at 1.
217
. Id. at 16, 25.
218
. See Ramirez, supra note 139, at 2245; Staff Comment, Fed. Trade Comm’n, Letter
to Ctr. for Health Care Pol’y and Res. Dev. re: Certificate of Pub. Advantage Applications
Filed Pursuant to N.Y. Pub. Health L., N.Y. COMP. CODES R. & REGS. tit. 10, § 83-2 (2015),
https://
www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/advocacy_documents/ftc-staff-comment-center-health-care
-policy-resource-development-office-primary-care-health-systems/150422newyorkhealth.pdf
[https://perma.cc/X8YQ-R3TA].
94 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
competition plays in the healthcare sector.”
219
She reiterated the careful balancing
that federal antitrust enforcement agencies conduct when reviewing a proposed
merger or collaboration, including a weighing of the procompetitive and
anticompetitive effects of a proposed integration.
220
Without careful supervision
and narrowly defined limits on the scope of antitrust immunity, COPAs and grants
of state action immunity risk exacerbating antitrust concerns rather than
ameliorating them.
The FTC further demonstrated its skepticism of COPAs and state action
immunity recently with respect to New York’s COPA for health care
collaboratives.
221
In reviewing an application for a COPA, New York considers (1)
the potential benefits of the health care provider collaborative activities, including
preservation of needed health care services, improvement in quality and access to
services, lower costs, and improvements in payment methodologies; (2) the health
care provider landscape; (3) the potential disadvantages of the collaborative
activities; (4) the availability of alternatives that would be less harmful to
competition; and (5) the extent to which active supervision will mitigate the risks
associated with the collaboration.
222
Despite its review process, New York’s COPA
immunity raised substantial concerns at the FTC that such immunity would
promote anticompetitive behavior arising from healthcare integration.
223
On April
22, 2015, the FTC sent a letter to the Center for Health Care Policy and Resource
Development in New York, claiming that the FTC fully recognized the potential
procompetitive benefits that can arise from health care collaborations but that the
COPA exemptions “are based on inaccurate premises about the antitrust laws and
the value of collaboration among health care providers.”
224
The FTC found that a
COPA was unnecessary to enable providers to engage in procompetitive
collaborative activities, but it threatened to “immunize conduct that would not
generate efficiencies and therefore not pass muster under the antitrust laws.”
225
The
FTC went on to argue that the COPA risked increasing health care costs and
decreasing access to consumers in New York. States considering offering state
action immunity through legislation or a COPA program must be aware of FTC’s
concerns and carefully condition the immunity on significant data reporting
requirements, regulatory oversight, and explicit boundaries of antitrust
exemption.
226
219
. Ramirez, supra note 139, at 2246.
220
. See id.
221
. See Fed. Trade Comm’n, Letter to Ctr. for Health Care Pol’y and Res. Dev., supra
note 218.
222
. N.Y. COMP. CODES R. & REGS. tit. 10, § 1003.14 (2015).
223
. See Fed. Trade Comm’n, Letter to Ctr. for Health Care Pol’y and Res. Dev., supra
note 218. The entities applying for the COPA at issue were part of the Delivery System
Reform Incentive Program for Medicaid recipients; however, the COPA program applies to
all health care provider collaborations, including ACOs.
224
. Id. at 1.
225
. Id. (emphasis in original).
226
. See Fed. Trade Comm’n, Letter to Ctr. for Health Care Pol’y and Res. Dev., supra
note 218.
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 95
In general, while we favor incentivizing health insurers and providers to provide
price and quality data, we remain skeptical that offering immunity to state and
federal antitrust laws is an advisable means of doing so. States with no other
options should consider creating clear price, quality, and concentration thresholds
that would trigger revocation of the immunity.
States must determine how to best employ their antitrust laws to promote
competition and efficiency in the health care markets. Data collection and analysis
of health care prices, insurance premiums, utilization rates, and quality of care will
be essential to this effort. Such data would enable state officials to identify
anticompetitive collaborations as early as possible, and seek to revoke immunity or
engage in some form of antitrust enforcement if entities violated the terms of the
immunity. While states have a significant role to play in antitrust enforcement, as
Robert Berenson previously noted, antitrust enforcement “can only be one—and
not the primary—approach to addressing provider pricing power.”
227
C. ACO Certification
To monitor the impact of vertical integration on price, quality, and competition,
state certification programs can offer a more comprehensive and preferable alterna-
tive to COPAs and state action immunity. Unlike the regulatory approval and
reporting requirements for Medicare ACOs, there is no regime of oversight for
commercial ACOs. States can take a more active role overseeing health care
integration, particularly commercial ACOs, by creating Certificate of Authority
programs. States can tailor the Certificate of Authority requirements to enable them
to achieve their particular policy goals. Key considerations include determining
which state entity will oversee the certification, whether certification will be
mandatory or voluntary, whether to require antitrust and solvency reviews, what
price and quality disclosures to require, and whether to incentivize integration by
granting antitrust immunity and exemptions to other state laws.
228
Certification
programs also allow states to review these features of any particular ACO both
prior to certification and on an ongoing basis. Gathering historical and ongoing
price and quality data will enable states to monitor market dynamics, inform future
decisions regarding integration, and support antitrust enforcement actions.
To date, three states have established Certificate of Authority programs for com-
mercial ACOs—Texas, Massachusetts, and New York.
229
The features of the three
different programs reflect each state’s goals and concerns. Certification presents es-
sentially a quid pro quo, where the state offers a range of benefits to the integrating
entity—typically an ACO—in exchange for a more in-depth review up front and
227
. Robert Berenson, Addressing Pricing Power in Integrated Delivery: The Limits of
Antitrust, 40 J. HEALTH POL. POL’Y & L. 711, 714 (2015).
228
. HOLLINGSHEAD ET AL., supra note 186, at 14–16.
229
. These programs are Massachusetts Health Policy Commission (HPC), MASS. GEN.
LAWS ANN. ch. 6D, § 2 (West 2016); New York Certificates of Authority, N.Y. COMP. CODES
R. & REGS. tit. 10, § 1003.6 (2015); and Texas Health Care Collaboratives (HCC), TEX. INS.
CODE ANN. § 848 (West 2009).
96 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
continued oversight.
230
Massachusetts has a voluntary ACO Certification Program
governed by the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission. ACOs seeking
certification must satisfy several minimum standards, including the use of
alternative payment methodologies, providing medical and behavioral health
services across the continuum, and allowing for health care price transparency in
exchange for an HPC “seal of approval” and the opportunity for preferential
contracting with state-funded insurance contracts.
231
As to data gathering, HPC
already requires all provider organizations of a certain size and scope to register
and submit data on costs and charges to the Center for Health Information and
Analysis, but any ACO applying for certification must also register as a provider
and disclose such information regardless of size or scope.
232
While the ACO
certification process and its requirements are still under development, HPC has yet
to require a solvency review or offer further potential incentives for ACO
formation, such as immunity or a safe harbor from state and federal antitrust laws,
exemption from state self-referral, or other consumer protection laws.
233
According
to staff members at HPC, a seal of approval from the state “is a meaningful
distinction in a competitive marketplace, such as Massachusetts,”
234
which may
provide sufficient incentive for ACO certification, negating the need for the state to
grant such legal exemptions.
In Texas, the Department of Insurance governs the certification of Health Care
Collaboratives (HCCs), Texas’s version of ACOs.
235
Certification is mandatory for
the HCC to take on certain levels of financial risk, and the program focuses mostly
on the antitrust implications of HCCs.
236
To obtain certification, an HCC must
demonstrate the willingness and ability to increase collaboration and integration
among health care providers; promote improvements in care quality and outcomes;
reduce preventable medical errors; contain costs without jeopardizing quality; and
gather, analyze, and report statistics on health care costs, quality, access, and
230
. See, e.g., MASS. GEN. LAWS ANN. ch. 6D, § 2 (West 2016) (setting forth duty of
HPCs to monitor health care delivery and payment); N.Y. COMP. CODES R. & REGS. tit. 10, §
1003.1 (2015) (setting forth data reporting requirements for ACOs); TEX. INS. CODE ANN. §
848.106 (Supp. 2016) (setting forth quality and cost monitoring requirements for HCCs).
New York only certifies non-risk-bearing ACOs. Organizations that bear insurance risk or
manage care, as defined under New York insurance law, must receive an appropriate license.
N.Y. COMP. CODES R. & REGS. tit. 10, § 1003.1.
231
. See MASS. GEN. LAWS ANN. ch. 6D, § 15 (West 2016) (setting forth standards for
certification as an ACO in Massachusetts); HOLLINGSHEAD ET AL., supra note 186, at 14.
232
. MASS. GEN. LAWS ANN. ch. 6D, § 15.
233
. Id.; HOLLINGSHEAD ET AL., supra note 186, at 17.
234
. HOLLINGSHEAD ET AL., supra note 186, at 14 (quoting from interviews conducted by
the authors with key officials at HPC).
235
. See, e.g., TEX. INS. CODE ANN. §§ 848.056–57 (West 2009) (providing requirements
for application for certification of authority and approval of that application); id. § 848.201
(establishing basis for state enforcement actions against an HCC).
236
. HOLLINGSHEAD ET AL., supra note 186, at 15.
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 97
utilization.
237
In addition, the HCC must fund and engage in an in-depth antitrust
review that provides evidence that the proposed collaboration is not likely to harm
competition and that the procompetitive effects of the collaboration outweigh any
anticompetitive effects of increased market power.
238
Having the applicants fund
the reviews saves state resources, but may also discourage health care entities from
forming HCCs. To date, no health care provider organization has applied for certifi-
cation as an HCC in Texas, and so whether this type of certification serves to
protect competition or discourage integration remains uncertain.
In contrast to Massachusetts and Texas, New York’s voluntary certificate of au-
thority for commercial ACOs both demands more of and offers more to applying
ACOs. New York encourages clinical and financial integration by offering to
exempt qualifying ACOs from prosecution under the corporate practice of medicine
doctrine, state and federal antitrust laws, and prohibitions on fee splitting and self-
referrals.
239
In exchange, the ACO must agree to “[p]rovide, manage and coordinate
health care . . . for a defined population . . . ; [b]e accountable for quality, cost, and
delivery of health care to ACO patients; [n]egotiate, receive and distribute any
shared savings or losses; and [e]stablish, report and ensure provider compliance
with health care criteria including quality performance standards.”
240
In addition to
the materials requested for initial certification application, ACOs applying for a
COPA must submit any additional information requested by the state during the
COPA review process described above.
241
State certification of ACOs offers a means of incentivizing beneficial integration
in health care while offering states the opportunity to gather valuable cost and
quality data to determine the impact of such integration on the dynamics in the
health care markets. States considering certification should monitor the success of
Massachusetts, Texas, and New York to determine which elements of their
programs to emulate. The design of an ACO certification program entails policy
tradeoffs. For instance, mandatory certification enables states to guarantee
oversight and access to essential cost and quality data, but it may create substantial
barriers to ACO formation, which states may still want to encourage. By contrast,
the promise of state action immunity via a COPA may encourage ACO formation,
but it may also unduly protect entities that engage in anticompetitive behavior and
abuse market power. Finally, voluntary certification programs that do not offer
significant benefits may not enroll many ACOs, which would significantly hinder
the state’s ability to monitor and regulate the activities of integrating health care
entities.
237
. TEX. INS. CODE ANN. § 848.057; see also HOLLINGSHEAD ET AL., supra note 186, at
15 (stating that depending on complexity and extent, review costs could range from $25,000
to $250,000 for the initial review and up to $10,000 per annual renewal).
238
. TEX. INS. CODE ANN. § 848.057(a)(5)–(6).
239
. See HOLLINGSHEAD ET AL., supra note 186, at 14–15.
240
. N.Y. COMP. CODES R. & REGS. tit. 10 § 1003.6(b) (2015).
241
. See supra notes 221225 Error! Bookmark not defined.Error! Bookmark not
defined.and accompanying text.
98 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
D. Rate Oversight Authority
A step beyond ACO certification models that only apply to certain forms of inte-
gration is to vest more widespread rate oversight authority in a rate oversight body.
There are two models of oversight authority: (1) an independent rate commission
that reviews and oversees provider rates; or (2) expanding the insurance rate
review authority of the state department of insurance. Authorities under both
models can be vested with a spectrum of authority ranging from weaker reporting
or recommendation power to stronger rate approval and enforcement power. To be
effective, however, the rate oversight body should be insulated from capture by the
providers or insurers it regulates and possess regulatory and enforcement authority
to limit rate increases.
1. Rate Oversight Commission
States can establish an independent rate oversight commission to oversee
providers’ health care prices and transactions in their state. A rate oversight
commission’s charge typically includes authority to study and make
recommendations on proposed health care mergers and to monitor prices and
quality data postmerger. But a more powerful oversight model vests the oversight
commission with regulatory authority to enforce and limit excessive provider
prices.
In states that have established an APCD, a commission could have authority to
analyze statewide claims data from the APCD to evaluate the pricing power, effi-
ciency, utilization, and quality of the existing provider landscape. Based on its find-
ings, the commission then makes recommendations and supplies data to both the
state’s attorney general regarding proposed mergers or anticompetitive provider be-
havior and policy-making bodies regarding the need for regulatory intervention.
242
For example, if the commission observes that powerful providers are using anti-
tiering provisions in contracts with health plans to limit the ability of those health
plans to steer members to lower cost or higher value providers, the commission
could recommend enforcement action by the state attorney general, or legislation
prohibiting anti-tiering clauses in provider-plan contracts. A rate oversight
commission also could be given more direct regulatory authority beyond simply
monitoring and making recommendations. For example, it might be granted the
ability to implement price caps if prices rise beyond certain supracompetitive
thresholds.
To date, five states have established a rate-oversight commission: Delaware,
Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania.
243
Perhaps the most
242
. An example is Pennsylvania’s Health Care Cost Containment Council, which has
the authority to collect, analyze, and make recommendations on health care price data. See
35 PA. STAT. AND CONS. STAT. ANN. § 449.17b (West Supp. 2016); NASI PANEL ON PRICING
POWER, supra note 26, at 42.
243
. See DEL. CODE ANN. tit. 16, § 9902 (West 2003) (establishing the Delaware Health
Commission); MD. CODE ANN., HEALTH–GEN. § 19-720 (LexisNexis 2015) (establishing the
state Health Services Cost Review Commission); MASS. GEN. LAWS ANN. ch. 6D, § 2 (West
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 99
prominent example of such a body is the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission.
In terms of rate oversight, HPC has some regulatory authority, with the ability to
require providers that exceed cost growth benchmarks to implement performance
improvement plans and fine them if the provider fails to comply.
244
Along with
HPC, rate oversight commissions in Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania have
authority to analyze price and cost data and make recommendations.
245
The
commission in Maryland, by contrast, has additional authority to approve and set
inpatient and outpatient rates and limit hospitals’ total revenues.
246
In addition, in
2015 Colorado established a health care cost-containment commission with a three-
year mandate to study the drivers of health care cost growth, analyze the state’s
APCD and insurance rate review data, and make recommendations to the
legislature.
247
A significant challenge to the effectiveness of an independent rate oversight
commission is protecting the body from regulatory capture.
248
In particular, it is
important to insulate the commission from undue influence from health care
providers and powerful health systems who will resist oversight efforts and
commission recommendations that scrutinize or threaten their market power and
pricing practices. The Massachusetts HPC, for example, was structured to avoid
capture by requiring diverse representation, including those with experience as a
health administrator, a health economist, a physician, and a representative from a
variety of perspectives including consumer advocates, health insurance, health care
workforce, and labor unions, among others.
249
In addition, the members of the HPC
may not be employed as a state executive branch official and may not be employed
by, affiliated with, serve as a board member, or have a financial stake in any health
care provider.
250
Another challenge is making sure the rate oversight commission coordinates
with other existing government agencies and does not just add another regulatory
2016) (establishing the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission); N.Y. INS. LAW § 213
(McKinney 2015) (establishing the New York State Health Care Quality and Cost
Containment Commission); 35 PA. CONS. STAT. AND CONS. STAT. ANN. § 449.17b (West
Supp. 2016) (establishing the Health Care Cost Containment Council).
244
. MASS. GEN. LAWS ANN. ch. 6D, § 3; see also NASI PANEL ON PRICING POWER, supra
note 26, at 42.
245
. See supra note 242.
246
. MD. CODE ANN., HEALTH-GEN. §§ 19-219 to 19-221 (LexisNexis 2015) (providing
authority for the Maryland’s Health Services Cost Review Commission (HSCRC) to review
and set hospital rates); MD. CODE ANN., INS. § 15-604 (LexisNexis 2015) (requiring all
payers to reimburse Maryland hospitals based on the rates established by the HSCRC). For a
further discussion of Maryland’s all-payer rate setting program, see infra Part IV.F.
247
. See COLO. REV. STAT. ANN. § 25–46–101 to 105 (West Supp. 2015) (establishing
the Colorado Commission on Affordable Health Care).
248
. See generally Rachel E. Barkow, Insulating Agencies: Avoiding Capture Through
Institutional Design, 89 TEX. L. REV. 15 (2010).
249
. MASS. GEN. LAWS ANN. ch. 6D, § 15.
250
. Id. § 2.
100 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
body to the mix.
251
To be effective, a commission must closely communicate with
the APCD authority, the state attorney general, the department of insurance,
certificate-of-need authorities, and others. Although it can be extremely valuable
for a state to have an expert, independent commission to analyze APCD data and
make policy or enforcement recommendations, the most effective model of rate
oversight commission must be vested with meaningful regulatory and enforcement
authority—whether it is the power to approve provider budgets, impose limits on
excessive prices or price increases, or engage in rate regulation.
2. Insurance Rate Review
States could also increase the insurance rate review authority of the department
of insurance. The ACA requires states to review proposed insurance rates for non-
grandfathered health plans and determine the reasonableness of any proposed rate
increase of more than 10%, but it does not require states to give prior-approval (or
disapproval) authority over such rate hikes to the department of insurance.
252
Pursu-
ant to these requirements, many states strengthened their insurance rate review
functions. States with prior-approval authority require health insurers to submit
their rates to the department of insurance for prior approval, and the insurance
commissioner has the authority to reject or reduce proposed rate increases.
253
Other
251
. See 35 PA. STAT. AND CONS. STAT. ANN. § 449.17b (West Supp. 2016) (creating an
oversight commission with members who are appointed by the Governor and members of
the legislature); NASI PANEL ON PRICING POWER, supra note 26, at 42.
252
. 42 U.S.C. § 300gg–94(c) (2012); 45 C.F.R. § 154.200 (2015). If the state does not
establish an effective rate review authority, the Department of Health and Human Services
shall determine the reasonableness of the proposed rate increase above 10%, but it does not
have the authority to disapprove the rate. For more on the ACA’s insurance rate review re-
quirements and state rate review activities, see generally John Aloysius Cogan Jr., Health
Insurance Rate Review, 88 TEMPLE L. REV. 411 (2016).
253
. “Prior approval” authority generally means that the state insurance commissioner
can approve, reject, or reduce proposed rate increases from insurers. If a rate is not
disapproved or reduced by a deadline, it goes into effect. COMMUNITY CATALYST, RATE
REVIEW: WHAT IS IT AND WHY DOES IT MATTER? 2 (2013),
http://www.communitycatalyst.org/resources
/publications/body/Rate-review-fact-sheet-FINAL.pdf [https://perma.cc/7E8G-CE4G]. The
following states vest the insurance commissioner with prior approval authority: Alabama,
ALA. CODE § 27-2-17 (LexisNexis 2014); Alaska, ALASKA STAT. § 21.51.405 (2014);
Arkansas, ARK. CODE ANN. § 23-79-109 (Supp. 2015); Colorado, COLO. REV. STAT. ANN.
§10-16-107 (West Supp. 2015); Delaware, DEL. CODE ANN. tit. 16, §§ 9902–9903 (Supp.
2014); Hawaii, HAW. REV. STAT. ANN. § 431:14G-105 (West Supp. 2016); Indiana. IND.
CODE § 27-8-4-7 (2012); Iowa, IOWA CODE ANN. § 514A.13 (West 2015); Kansas, KAN.
STAT. ANN. § 40-2215 (Supp. 2015); Kentucky, KY. REV. STAT. ANN. § 304.17-380
(LexisNexis 2011)), Maryland, MD. CODE ANN. HEALTH–GEN. § 19-108 (LexisNexis 2015);
Massachusetts, MASS GEN. LAWS ch. 6D § 2 (West 2016); Michigan, MICH. COMP. LAWS
ANN. § 550.1607 (West Supp. 2016); Minnesota, MINN. STAT. ANN § 62A.02 (West Supp.
2016); Mississippi, MISS. CODE ANN. § 83–9–3 (West Supp. 2015); Nebraska, NEB. REV.
STAT. ANN. § 44-710 (LexisNexis Supp. 2015); Nevada, NEV. REV. STAT. ANN. § 686B.070
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 101
states give the insurance commissioner weaker “file-and-use” authority, where rates
go into effect once they have been filed and the department has no ability to reject
the rate increase.
254
States also vary in terms of which types of health insurance
products (e.g., individual, group, HMOs, PPOs) are subject to their rate-review
requirements.
255
Recent research suggests states with stronger forms of rate review
authority, such as prior-approval authority and loss-ratio requirements, experienced
lower premium increases in the individual market than states without rate review
authority or with only file-and-use authority.
256
Although insurance rate review focuses on premium rate increases rather than
on provider prices, limiting the ability of insurance companies to raise premiums
puts pressure on providers negotiating with the health plans.
257
When health plans
are limited in their ability to raise premiums, they cannot simply pass high provider
prices on to the policy holders. But most state insurance rate review systems, even
as augmented by ACA requirements, are generally inadequate to offset some insur-
ers’ lack of bargaining power relative to powerful providers.
To really get at provider pricing power, insurance rate review must be further
(LexisNexis 2014); New Hampshire, N.H. REV. STAT. ANN. § 415:1 (2015); New Mexico,
N.M. STAT. ANN. § 59A-18-13.2 (West Supp. 2015); New York, N.Y. INS. LAW § 213
(McKinney 2015); North Carolina, N.C. GEN. STAT. ANN. § 58-51-95 (West Supp. 2015);
North Dakota, N.D. CENT. CODE § 26.1-17-26 (2010); Ohio, OHIO REV. CODE ANN. §
3923.021 (LexisNexis 2010); Oklahoma, OKL. STAT. ANN. tit. 36 § 2606 (West 2011);
Oregon, OR. REV. STAT. § 743.018 (2015); Tennessee, TENN. CODE ANN. § 56-26-102 (Supp.
2015); Vermont, VT. STAT. ANN. tit. 8 § 4062 (2015); and West Virginia, W. VA. CODE ANN.
§ 16-29B-1 (LexisNexis Supp. 2016).
254
. “File-and-use” authority generally means that the insurance companies must file
their proposed rates with the department of insurance, but the rates may go into effect
without department approval. The department may have the ability to go back and
disapprove a rate increase that was later deemed unreasonable, usually triggered by a
consumer complaint process. COMMUNITY CATALYST, supra note 253, at 2. The following
states vest the insurance commissioner with file-and-use authority: Arizona, ARIZ. REV.
STAT. ANN. § 20-1342.02 (2010); Illinois, 235 ILL. COMP. STAT ANN. 93/25 (West 2008);
Louisiana, LA. STAT. ANN. § 22:972 (2009); Missouri, MO. ANN. STAT. § 354.152 (West
2015); Montana, MONT. CODE ANN. § 33-22-156 (2015); New Jersey, N.J. STAT. ANN. §
17B:18-5 (West 2013); South Carolina, S.C. CODE ANN. § 38-71-310 (2015); Texas, TEX.
INS. CODE ANN. § 1507.008 (West 2009); Utah, UTAH CODE ANN. § 31A-22-602 (LexisNexis
2014); and Virginia, VA. CODE ANN. § 38.2-316.1 (2015).
255
. The following states vest prior approval authority in the insurance commissioner
only for subsets of the insurance market: Connecticut, CONN. GEN. STAT. ANN. § 19a-638
(West 2011); Florida, FLA. STAT. ANN. § 627.410 (West 2016); Georgia, GA. CODE ANN. §
33-21-13 (2014); Idaho, IDAHO CODE § 41-5206 (2010); Maine, ME. REV. STAT. ANN. tit. 24-
A, § 2736 (2015); Pennsylvania, 35 PA. STAT. AND CONS. STAT. ANN. § 449.17b (West Supp.
2016); Rhode Island, 4D R.I. GEN. LAWS § 27-18-54 (2008); South Dakota, S.D. CODIFIED
LAWS § 58-17-4.1 (2004); Washington, WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 48.44.020 (West 2014);
Wisconsin, WIS. STAT. ANN. § 625.11 (West 2006); and Wyoming, WYO. STAT. ANN. § 26-
18-135 (2015).
256
. Pinar Karaca-Mandic, Brent D. Fulton, Ann Hollingshead & Richard M. Schaffer,
States with Stronger Health Insurance Rate Review Authority Experienced Lower Premiums
in the Individual Market, 34 HEALTH AFF. 1358, 1360 (2015).
257
. See NASI PANEL ON PRICING POWER, supra note 26, at 44.
102 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
strengthened by giving the insurance commissioner authority to condition approval
of insurance rates on mandatory limits on provider price increases. For instance,
Rhode Island has expanded its insurance department’s authority to limit annual
price increases for inpatient and outpatient services.
258
The state caps the amount of
price increases to which insurers can contractually agree to the Consumer Price
Index-Urban plus 1%.
259
Rhode Island’s cap on the rate increases insurance plans
may accept from providers is a form of indirect provider rate caps via health
insurance rate review.
The advantages of strengthening insurance rate review authority are that
stronger forms of insurance rate review may be effective at constraining premium
growth, which may be especially important as the insurance market becomes more
concentrated.
260
A significant advantage is that insurance rate review builds on a
state’s existing institutions and infrastructure. In addition, even in states without an
APCD, the insurance commissioner has extensive authority to gather private price
and claims data from payers in the state. To be effective, however, most states
would have to augment the authority of the insurance commissioner, as Rhode
Island did, to explicitly place limits on provider price increases as part of its
insurance rate review authority.
261
Without the authority to impose limits on provider prices, a major limitation of
most states’ insurance rate review system is that the standards for reviewing rate
increases are not calibrated to address providers’ pricing power but rather get at an-
tiquated property-casualty insurance market problems, such as financial
solvency.
262
Another challenge of insurance rate review is the scope of most states’
258
. 6C R.I. GEN. LAWS § 42-14.5-3 (Supp. 2015); CODE R.I. REG. 4424 (2012).
259
. See R.I. Office of the Health Ins. Comm., Reg. 17, Sec. 7.e (setting affordability
standards that include limits on hospital rate increases as a condition of health insurance rate
approval), http://www.ohic.ri.gov/documents/Regulation-17-Filing-of-Forms-and-Rates.pdf
[https://perma.cc/29UW-RUBH]. The rules limit hospital price increases to the CPI-Urban
less Food and Energy for the Northeast Region (CPI-U) plus 1%, decreasing to CPI-U plus
0% by 2018. See Cogan, supra note 252, at 463 n.297.
260
. Karaca-Mandic et al., supra note 256, at 1365; Healthy Competition? An
Examination of the Proposed Health Insurance Mergers and the Consequent Impact on
Competition: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and
Antitrust Law of the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 114th Cong. (2015),
https://judiciary.house.gov/wp-content
/uploads/2016/02/114-47_96274.pdf [https://perma.cc/ASS3-W8AW] (written statement of
Jaime S. King, Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings College of Law).
261
. See supra notes 258–259 and accompanying text.
262
. John Cogan delves extensively into the post-ACA insurance rate review system and
concludes:
Since the states, and now the federal government, apply to health insurance a rate
review standard designed to address a set of market failures that existed a hundred
years ago for a different insurance product, the health insurance rate review
process is simply incapable of controlling the fundamental problems that plague
today’s health insurance market—the market failures leading to excessive provider
prices. As such, rate review can do little to control the medical cost component of
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 103
laws and the ACA are too limited and may not apply to all health insurance
products by excluding, for example, for-profit, employer-based, or large-group
plans.
263
In addition, it is unclear how existing rate review authority will apply to
provider-risk-bearing organizations, such as ACOs or conglomerates consisting of
health systems with a health plan. Another risk is that stronger limits on insurers’
premium revenue without addressing provider pricing power may drive insurers to
fold or exit the market. Finally, to the extent insurance rate caps or targets are based
on averages, they may widen the gap between the “must-have” and “have-not”
providers.
264
Must-have health systems may still command monopoly prices, but to
get under the cap, the insurers may force less powerful providers to lower prices
below sustainable levels or exit the market.
In sum, the existing rate review authority in most states will not likely provide
sufficient levers to oversee and contain the pricing power of integrated providers.
However, states can follow Rhode Island’s example and build on the existing
infrastructure and expertise of the insurance department to provide insurance
commissioners regulatory authority over private provider rate increases.
E. Private Rate Caps
As an intermediate step before full-fledged rate regulation and in conjunction
with the establishment of a rate oversight authority, a state could cap providers’
private health care prices. The cap would apply to all private payers, including out-
of-network payments and self-pay patients.
265
In many proposals, price caps are set
as a percentage of Medicare rates. For example, health economics and policy
experts from Dartmouth suggested a private price cap of 125% of Medicare
rates;
266
Robert Murray, former executive director of Maryland’s rate setting
health insurance rates. Simply put, there is a mismatch: health insurance rate
review uses the wrong tools for the job at hand.
Cogan, supra note 252, at 415 (emphasis in original).
263
. See id. at 469.
264
. See NASI PANEL ON PRICING POWER, supra note 26, at 44.
265
. Mark Hall & Carl Schneider, Price-Gouging by Doctors and Hospitals, HEALTH
REFORM WATCH (July 19, 2009), https://web.archive.org/web/20091211202230/http://
www.healthreformwatch.com/2009/07/19/price-gouging-by-doctors-and-hospitals/ [https://
perma.cc/N2HR-B6HE] (suggesting a price cap of 150% of Medicare prices for self-pay
patients).
266
. Jonathan Skinner, Elliot Fisher & James Weinstein, The 125 Percent Solution:
Fixing Variations in Health Care Prices, HEALTH AFF. BLOG (Aug. 26, 2014),
http://healthaffairs.org
/blog/2014/08/26/the-125-percent-solution-fixing-variations-in-health-care-prices/ [https://perma.cc
/6ZU5-9433] (“If every patient and every insurance company always had the option of
paying 125 percent of the Medicare price for any service, we would effectively cap the worst
of the price spikes. No longer would the tourist checked out at the ER for heat stroke be
clobbered with a sky-high bill. Nor would the uninsured single mother be charged 10 times
the best price for her child’s asthma care. This is not just another government regulation, but
instead a protection plan that shields consumers from excessive market power.”).
104 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
agency, suggested a cap of 150–175% of Medicare rates.
267
Recent analysis
demonstrating that private inpatient payments are, on average, 175% of Medicare
payments may suggest that maximum price cap levels may need to be even
higher.
268
Alternatively, price caps could be defined not by reference to Medicare
rates but in terms of average or percentages of private prices. Such a price cap
would require access to private price data from an APCD or other database.
269
Rate caps offer several advantages. First, they can limit outlier prices at the top
end of the scale, while still allowing for some competition below the cap.
270
Rate
caps preserve the ability of providers to charge different prices from each other,
which allows providers to compete within this range on the basis of price or
quality, but the caps limit the extent of price variation by imposing a ceiling on
prices.
271
Second, a broad cap on private payer rates would improve payers’
bargaining position to resist price increases by powerful providers or at least put a
regulatory backstop on the degree to which such providers can charge monopoly
prices. Third, rate caps are simpler from a regulatory perspective than rate setting,
where the administrative body has to set prices for each service, because rate caps
piggyback on the prices set in the Medicare system.
272
267
. See Robert Murray, The Case for a Coordinated System of Provider Payments in the
United States, 37 J. HEALTH POL. POL’Y & L. 679, 689 (2012) [hereinafter Murray, The Case
for a Coordinated System of Provider Payments]; Robert Murray, Health Servs. Cost Review
Comm’n, The Cost of Hospital Care: Experience from Maryland’s All-Payer Rate Setting
System, NAT’L HEALTH POL’Y F., at slide 21 (Oct. 8, 2010), http://www.hscrc.state.md.us
/documents/pdr/Presentations/TheCostofHospitalCareNHPFR_Murray2010-10-08.pdf [https://
perma.cc/U25A-RRJ2].
268
. Thomas M. Selden, Zeynal Karaca, Patricia Keenan, Chapin White & Richard
Kronick, The Growing Difference Between Public and Private Payment Rates for Inpatient
Hospital Care, 34 HEALTH AFF. 2147, 2148–49 (2015) (finding that the differential between
average private rates have grown to 75% higher than Medicare rates in 2012, up from about
10% higher than Medicare in the period 1996–2001).
269
. See, e.g., Robin Gelburd, The Need for a Comprehensive, Current, and Market-
Representative Health Care Cost Benchmark, HEALTH AFF. BLOG (Oct. 7, 2014),
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2014/10/07/the-need-for-a-comprehensive-current-and-market-
representative-health-care-cost-benchmark/ [https://perma.cc/2PR6-AVNB ] (proposing to
set a provider’s “usual, customary, and reasonable” (UCR) rates, used in fee disputes for out-
of-network and self-pay patients, to 80% of average charges drawn from a geographically
representative dataset of private prices, here, FairHealth.org); David Seltz, David Auerbach,
Kate Mills, Marian Wrobel & Aaron Pervin, Addressing Price Variation in Massachusetts,
HEALTH AFF. BLOG (May 12, 2016), http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2016/05/12/addressing-price-
variation
-in-massachusetts/ [https://perma.cc/QKG9-ZQ6J].
270
. NASI PANEL ON PRICING POWER, supra note 26, at 46.
271
. Erin C. Fuse Brown, Resurrecting Health Care Rate Regulation, 67 HASTINGS
L.J. 85, 133 (2015).
272
. Robert A. Berenson, Jonathan H. Sunshine, David Helms & Emily Lawton, Why
Medicare Advantage Plans Pay Hospitals Traditional Medicare Prices, 34 HEALTH AFF.
1289, 1295 (2015) (“Placing an upper limit on what a hospital or physician can charge as a
percentage above Medicare prices might provide a regulatory alternative to actually setting
the commercial rates themselves, likely a less intrusive and less resource-intensive endeavor,
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 105
On the other hand, to the extent that rate caps piggyback on Medicare rates, they
incorporate all the flaws of the Medicare pricing system as well as its strengths.
273
Rate caps also do not eliminate inefficiencies and administrative costs of price dis-
crimination by providers, the practice of charging different rates to different payers
for the same service.
274
Rate caps should only be considered for noncompetitive
markets, because any rate-cap level, even if supported by substantial expertise and
data, will not precisely replicate the maximum prices that would result in a
competitive market in equilibrium. Some have criticized rate caps and other forms
of rate regulation as potentially stifling financial incentives for innovation.
275
Rate
caps are politically challenging as well; they are likely to be opposed by the most
powerful providers whose pricing power will be limited by the caps. Caps may be
supported, however, by health plans, employers, and other purchasers of health care
because they could constrain the cost of including must-have providers in health
plan networks.
To date, no state has implemented price caps, although Rhode Island’s insurance
rate caps
276
and West Virginia’s now-defunct hospital rate review program
277
resemble the price caps described here.
278
Price caps are often viewed as an intermediate, less intrusive alternative to rate-
setting to limit unwarranted price variation especially among dominant providers.
Nevertheless, some administrative infrastructure must be established to determine
whether to implement a price cap or how to set the cap. States will require data
from an APCD and perhaps a rate oversight commission with expertise to come up
especially if the out-of-network ceilings were set initially to affect only a small number of
especially high-price hospitals.”).
273
. Gelburd, supra note 269 (critiquing a system of price caps based on Medicare prices
because Medicare may not be representative of costs or particular dynamics in certain
markets, such as for lower-volume providers).
274
. Uwe E. Reinhardt, The Many Different Prices Paid to Providers and the Flawed
Theory of Cost Shifting: Is It Time for a More Rational All-Payer System?, 30 HEALTH AFF.
2125, 2128–29 (2011).
275
. See, e.g., Michael A. Morrisey, Frank A. Sloan & Samuel A. Mitchell, State Rate
Setting: An Analysis of Some Unresolved Issues, 2 HEALTH AFF. 36, 36 (1983) (noting that
detractors of state rate setting say that rate setting stifles innovation).
276
. See supra text accompanying notes 258–259.
277
. See supra text accompanying note 290–292.
278
. In an effort to address persistent provider price variation in Massachusetts, a SEIU-
led ballot initiative in 2015–2016 proposed to limit providers’ private rates to a corridor 20%
above or 10% below the average price paid to all providers by that health plan for that
service. Massachusetts Fair Health Care Pricing Act, No. 15-19 (2015–2016 Mass. Ballot
Initiatives), http://www.mass.gov/ago/docs/government/2015-petitions/15-19.pdf
[https://perma.cc
/3CZ6-8D3Q]. The SEIU agreed to drop the ballot measure when the Massachusetts
legislature passed a compromise to create a fund to redistribute funds from higher- to lower-
priced hospitals and with the promise of more union jobs at the largest hospital system.
Priyanka Dayal McCluskey & Jim O’Sullivan, Deal Reached To Avert Ballot Question on
Hospitals, BOS. GLOBE (May 25, 2016), https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/05/25
/deal-reached-avert-ballot-question-hospitals/xDPLHx13YRUq89Qz8FMCXK/story.html [https://perma
.cc/TZ8C-TG7K].
106 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
with the price cap levels and methodology.
F. Provider Rate Regulation
In highly concentrated provider markets where provider conglomerates are exer-
cising unchecked market power, states can address provider pricing power through
direct regulation of provider prices. Different versions of rate regulation are dis-
cussed below: all-payer rate setting exemplified by Maryland’s system; private rate
regulation as illustrated by West Virginia’s now-defunct rate-review authority; and
the move to incorporate rate setting into global budget initiatives.
1. All-Payer Rate Setting
The prototypical system of provider rate regulation is all-payer rate setting,
which would set the rate for all payers, whether private insurers, government
programs, or self-pay patients. To include Medicare in the all-payer model, the
state must obtain a waiver from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
279
Under an all-payer system, either a rate setting commission or a representative
body of payers negotiates a uniform set of provider reimbursement rates.
280
Although traditionally applied to hospital services, in its broadest form, rate setting
could apply to all provider services (whether hospital, physician, post-acute, lab,
diagnostic, etc.).
Under the rate setting commission approach, the commission collects detailed
information about costs, patient volumes, hospital finances, and services for each
provider for use in rate setting.
281
The best-known and only example of this public
utility model of rate setting is Maryland’s all-payer rate setting system, where an
administrative body sets hospital rates.
282
Maryland’s system has controlled
hospital costs-per-case, but it must be paired with global budgets or ACO-type
mechanisms to limit incentives to increase patient volume. In the 1970s, several
states adopted rate setting systems only to abandon them during the deregulatory
era of the 1980s–90s when managed care seemed to be constraining health care
279
. See Robert Murray, Setting Hospital Rates To Control Costs and Boost Quality: The
Maryland Experience, 28 HEALTH AFF. 1395, 1395–96 (2009).
280
. See Vladeck & Rice, supra note 13, at 1312–13.
281
. Murray, The Case for a Coordinated System of Provider Payments, supra note 267,
at 686–88. The data collection and analysis is similar to that performed through an APCD
and could also be used for rate setting.
282
. MD. CODE ANN., HEALTH-GEN. § 19-201 to 19-203 (LexisNexis 2015) (establishing
the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission (HSCRC)); §§ 19-219 to 19-221
(providing for the HSCRC’s authority to review and set hospital rates); MD. CODE ANN., INS.
§ 15-604 (requiring all payers to reimburse Maryland hospitals based on the rates established
by the HSCRC); MD. CODE REGS. 10.37.01–.37.12 (2016) (setting forth administrative rules
for hospital rate review and rate setting in Maryland); see also Murray, The Case for a
Coordinated System of Provider Payments, supra note 267, at 686.
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 107
costs.
283
For the second model of rate setting through collective negotiation, there are no
examples from the United States, but Japan, Germany, France, Switzerland, and
other OECD countries use this model.
284
This model combines the bargaining
leverage of all payers together in an oligopsony.
285
To counteract provider pricing
power, insurers combine their bargaining power and collectively negotiate with
each provider separately or with a consortium representing all providers.
286
For
those concerned about concentration among health insurers, allowing payers to
come together to bargain collectively with providers is not the same as increasing
concentration in the insurance market. The individual health plans would still have
to compete for their own customers on the basis of premiums, provider networks,
consumer experience, and other benefits.
287
Although rate setting eliminates price discrimination by a single provider
against its various payers, rate setting generally allows providers to charge different
prices from each other, which preserves some degree of competition. Competition
can be amplified by reporting providers’ percentage markup above the standard rate
and quality ratings to allow price and quality comparisons with other providers.
288
Somewhat like Medicare, this approach allows for price differences to reflect
differences in costs if, for example, the facility is a teaching hospital.
289
To the
extent it encourages price and quality transparency, rate setting could also
encourage competition among providers on the basis of value, while still limiting
the pricing power of dominant providers.
2. Private Rate Regulation
Until recently, West Virginia provided a different model of provider rate regula-
283
. John E. McDonough, Tracking the Demise of State Hospital Rate Setting, 16
HEALTH AFF. 142, 145 (1997).
284
. See Uwe E. Reinhardt, A Modest Proposal on Payment Reform, HEALTH AFF. BLOG
(July 24, 2009), http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2009/07/24/a-modest-proposal-on-payment-reform/
[https://perma.cc/YK3S-DXJV]; Reinhardt, supra note 274, at 2129; Vladeck & Rice, supra
note 13, at 1313.
285
. Vladeck & Rice, supra note 13, at 1313.
286
. See Austin Frakt, All-Payer Rate Setting and Health Reform’s Underpants Gnomes
Strategy, WASH. POST: WONKBLOG (June 2, 2011), http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs
/wonkblog/post/all-payer-rate-setting-and-health-reforms-underpants-gnomes-strategy/2011
/06/02/AG3SfHHH_blog.html#pagebreak [https://perma.cc/FP6X-2KD3].
287
. See id.
288
. See Murray, The Case for a Coordinated System of Provider Payments, supra note
267, at 683–84; Reinhardt, supra note 284; Uwe E. Reinhardt, The Pricing of U.S. Hospital
Services: Chaos Behind the Veil of Secrecy, 25 HEALTH AFF. 57, 65–66 (2006); Austin Frakt,
Simply Put: All-Payer Rate Setting, INCIDENTAL ECONOMIST BLOG (Apr. 8, 2011), http://
theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/simply-put-all-payer-rate-setting/ [https://perma.cc
/7CAW-X5EQ].
289
. See Frakt, supra note 288; Reinhardt, supra note 284.
108 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
tion through review of providers’ private prices.
290
West Virginia established its
Health Care Authority in 1983 to gather information on health care costs and run
the state’s rate regulation and certificate of need programs to control health care
costs and capital expenditures.
291
In 2016, West Virginia abolished the agency’s
hospital rate review authority,
292
but we describe its system here as an example of a
state program to regulate private prices.
Under the prior system, West Virginia hospitals would submit a rate application
to the Authority with their proposed private rates and their cost information, and
the Health Care Authority could approve, disapprove, or seek modification of the
hospital’s rates for private payers.
293
West Virginia’s hospital rate review system
excluded Medicare rates (which would require a Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services (CMS) waiver) as well Medicaid and public employees’
insurance rates.
294
A hospital could accept a guaranteed or pre-approved rate
increase by tying its proposed increase to a benchmarking methodology, based on
peer hospitals’ costs and charges, or it could apply for a greater rate increase
subject to more in-depth review.
295
Rather than setting rates precisely for each
hospital, West Virginia’s system effectively created a rate corridor with the
authority-approved charge limit serving as the ceiling on its privately negotiated
prices and the hospital’s costs serving as the floor.
296
Under this system, hospitals
could negotiate different prices and payment methodologies with different payers,
preserving a degree of price variation and discrimination.
Under its private rate review system, West Virginia’s costs-per-case grew
slower than the national average, suggesting that it was somewhat effective at
controlling health care price growth.
297
However, West Virginia’s inpatient and
290
. West Virginia’s was not an all-payer system, because it did not include Medicare
and Medicaid in its rate-setting authority.
291
. W. VA. CODE ANN. § 16-29b-1 to -29 (West 1997 & Supp. 2016) (§ 16-29b-19 to -
21a repealed 2016); W. VA. CODE R. § 65-5-1 to -28 (1992).
292
. S.B. 68, 2016 Leg., Reg. Sess. (W. Va. 2016) (enacted) (amending the powers
granted to the Health Care Authority in West Virginia).
293
. W.VA. CODE ANN. § 16-29b-19 (repealed 2016).
294
. ROBERT MURRAY & ROBERT A. BERENSON, HOSPITAL RATE SETTING REVISITED:
DUMB PRICE FIXING OR A SMART SOLUTION TO PROVIDER PRICING POWER AND DELIVERY
REFORM? 31 (2015), http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-
pdfs/2000516-Hospital-Rate-Setting-Revisited.pdf [https://perma.cc/9YEY-AM8K].
295
. See ANNA S. SOMMERS, CHAPIN WHITE & PAUL B. GINSBURG, ADDRESSING
HOSPITAL PRICING LEVERAGE THROUGH REGULATION: STATE RATE SETTING 7 & 9 n.24
(2012), http://nihcr.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Policy_Analysis_No._9.pdf
[https://perma.cc/VN8A-QB38].
296
. MURRAY & BERENSON, supra note 294, at 32 (“This corridor-based approach stands
in contrast to most other mandatory rate setting systems, such as Maryland, in which the ap-
proved rate largely acts as both a ceiling and a floor for a hospital and the hospital must
adjust its charges to be in compliance with that approved rate.”).
297
. GRAHAM ATKINSON, COMMONWEALTH FUND, PUB. 1332, STATE HOSPITAL RATE-
SETTING REVISITED 11 (2009) (“From 1985 to 2007, costs per [inpatient admission] in West
Virginia increased by 192 percent, compared with a nationwide increase of 213 percent.”);
MURRAY & BERENSON, supra note 294, at 38–39 (noting that in 2011, West Virginia had the
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 109
outpatient utilization rates were much higher than the national average, which
drove the state’s relatively high per capita hospital spending.
298
In any event,
without rate review authority and with new laws shielding hospital mergers and
conduct from state and federal antitrust liability,
299
West Virginia has moved
rapidly to remove oversight of hospital pricing or competition.
3. Global Budgets
Newer rate setting approaches are moving to incorporate global budgets to
simultaneously regulate prices and utilization for providers by imposing total
revenue limits on health systems.
300
States can prospectively set a global budget for
an integrated health system to cover the total expected health care costs of a defined
population for a given time period.
301
A health system that exceeds its global
budget must make up for the excess spending in the following year’s budget, but if
its expenditures come in under budget, the health system keeps the surplus.
CMS has modified Maryland’s rate setting waiver to require implementation of
global budgets.
302
Other states could similarly establish regulatory limits on
hospital budgets without first implementing stand-alone rate setting. Controlling a
provider’s total revenues simultaneously constrains both prices and utilization
because the provider’s revenues are the result of a combination of its prices,
16th lowest hospital markups at 151% above costs, versus a national average markup of
220% above costs, and that in 2012, West Virginia’s median gross price per inpatient
discharge was 26% lower than the U.S. median).
298
. See MURRAY & BERENSON, supra note 294, at 39.
299
. See S.B. 68, 2016 Leg., Reg. Sess. (W. Va. 2016) (enacted) (amending the powers
granted to the Health Care Authority in West Virginia); John Kennedy, W. Va. Gov. Signs
Bill with Antitrust Exemptions for Hospitals, LAW360 (Mar. 21, 2016),
http://www.law360.com
/articles/774171/w-va-gov-signs-bill-with-antitrust-exemptions-for-hospitals [https://perma.cc
/6UYR-NA6P].
300
. Rachel Block, State Models for Health Care Cost Measurement: A Policy and
Operational Framework, MILBANK MEMORIAL FUND, at 7 (2015). Global budgets can also be
implemented by private payers, often called “Alternative Quality Contracts” or ACOs with
two-sided risk, or “Total Cost of Care Contracts.” See, e.g., Ann Robinow, The Potential of
Global Payment: Insights from the Field, COMMONWEALTH FUND, at 3 (2010); Zirui Song,
Dana Gelb Safran, Bruce E. Landon, Mary Beth Landrum, Yulei He, Robert E. Mechanic,
Matthew P. Day & Matthew E. Chernew, The ‘Alternative Quality Contract,’ Based on a
Global Budget, Lowered Medical Spending and Improved Quality, 31 HEALTH AFF. 1885,
1885–86 (2012).
301
. See Song et al., supra note 300, at 1885.
302
. Maryland All-Payer Model Agreement, CMS–Md., Feb. 11, 2014,
http://mhcc.maryland.gov/mhcc/pages/hcfs/hcfs_hospital/documents/chcf_all_payer_model
_agreement.pdf [https://perma.cc/UJ6D-B9US] (setting forth CMS’s 2014 Medicare
innovation waiver for Maryland’s all-payer model, including limits on total hospital
revenues); see generally, Maryland All-Payer Model, CTRS. FOR MEDICARE & MEDICAID
SERVS. (Feb. 6, 2015), https://innovation.cms.gov/initiatives/Maryland-All-Payer-Model/
[https://perma.cc
/325V-LKZC].
110 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
utilization, and operating costs. A global budget approach tied to population health
spending may be more efficient than stand-alone hospital rate setting because
providers cannot simply increase utilization to make up for constrained prices,
increase prices to compensate for constrained utilization, or cost shift between
inpatient and outpatient settings.
Vermont passed legislation in 2012 to constrain total health care spending
through administrative review of hospital budgets.
303
Hospitals are required to
submit their proposed annual budget to the state’s Green Mountain Care Board for
review and approval.
304
The Board may require a hospital to adjust its budget with
changes to its rates or net revenues,
305
and hospital compliance with the budget is
enforceable through court-ordered injunction or civil administrative penalties.
306
Vermont is moving toward a global budget system, which would allow the Board
to set payments rates and total revenues for hospitals from all payers to manage all
of the health care for a given population.
307
Under the global budget system, the
Board would set a uniform rate increase for each hospital applicable to all payers,
eliminating the hospital’s separate rate negotiation with each commercial payer.
308
In late 2016, CMS and Vermont agreed to implement an all-payer model, which
aligns payment rates for Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial payers under an all-
payer accountable care organization.
309
Under the all-payer model, which not only
303
. VT. STAT. ANN. tit. 18, § 9456 (West 2012 & Supp. 2015); 4-7 VT. CODE R. §§
3:3.100–3.3.500; see generally Green Mountain Care Bd., The Green Mountain Guide to
Hospital Budget Review (2012), http://gmcboard.vermont.gov/sites/gmcb/files/files/hospital
-budget/GMCB-Hospital-Budget-Review-Guide.pdf [https://perma.cc/T4WR-MUYQ].
304
. VT. STAT. ANN. tit. 18, § 9456(a)–(d) (West 2012 & Supp. 2015); 4–7 VT. CODE R.
§ 3:3.300.
305
. 4-7 VT. CODE R. § 3:3.400.
306
. VT. STAT. ANN. tit. 18, § 9456(h) (West 2012 & Supp. 2015).
307
. Zack Budryk, VT Hospitals Eye “Global Budget” Payment Model, FIERCE
HEALTHCARE (Apr. 15, 2014), http://www.fiercehealthfinance.com/story/vt-hospitals-eye-
global-budget-payment-model/2014-04-15 [https://perma.cc/3XUS-7L8L]; Morgan True,
Vermont To Launch Global Budget Pilot for Hospitals, VT DIGGER (Apr. 14, 2014),
http://vtdigger.org/2014/04/14/vermont-launch-global-budget-pilot-hospitals/.
308
. Richard Slusky, Spenser Weppler & Robert Murray, Green Mountain Care Bd.,
Proposed Pilot Payment Reform Projects: Consideration of Hospital Global Budget Pilot,
VT. GEN. ASSEMBLY, at slide 8 (Apr. 3, 2014),
http://legislature.vermont.gov/assets/Documents
/2014/WorkGroups/House%20Ways%20and%20Means/Health%20Care/W~Robert%20Murray
%20and%20Richard%20Slusky~Proposed%20Pilot%20Payment%20Reform%20Projects
%20Consideration%20of%20Hospital%20Global%20Budget%20Pilot~4-3-2014.pdf
[https://perma.cc/F45Q-5QVE].
309
. Vermont All-Payer Accountable Care Organization Model Agreement, CMS–Vt.,
Oct. 27, 2016, http://gmcboard.vermont.gov/sites/gmcb/files/documents/10-27-16-vermont
-all-payer-accountable-care-organization-model-agreement.pdf [https://perma.cc/D6MR-JRHV];
see also, Green Mountain Care Board of Vermont, In re: Vermont All-Payer Accountable
Care Organization Model Agreement (Oct. 31, 2016),
http://gmcboard.vermont.gov/sites/gmcb
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 111
applies to hospital services but also includes physician and other ancillary
providers, Vermont will limit statewide per-capita health spending growth to 3.5%
annually and move away from a fee-for-service payment model to payments that
are adjusted for population health outcomes and quality of care targets.
310
Initial results from Maryland and Vermont’s efforts at hospital budget oversight
are promising. During the first year with global budgets, Maryland limited per
capita hospital cost growth to 1.47%—well under the target of 3.58% annual
growth—and saved Medicare $116 million.
311
Vermont’s hospitals have been
limited to modest budget increases, but they simultaneously increased their
profitability.
312
Global budget models are promising because they go beyond rate
setting models that focus only on prices to incorporate mechanisms to oversee all
the components of total health care spending: prices, utilization, and hospital
operating costs.
The primary advantage of all forms of provider rate regulation is that these ap-
proaches directly counteract providers’ pricing power in noncompetitive markets.
Rate regulation does this either through administrative rate setting as is done by
public utilities and in the Medicare program or by combining the bargaining power
of all purchasers and payers. Rate regulation also has the potential to dramatically
reduce administrative costs for providers. By eliminating price discrimination
among payers, providers could reduce the administrative costs of negotiating
different rates and maintaining separate billing procedures for each payer. These
administrative costs are significant drivers of health care costs as the United States’
fragmented payer landscape explains much of why providers’ administrative costs
are so much higher in the United States than in other countries with similarly
developed health systems.
313
To maximize transparency and administrative ease,
/files/documents/APM-FINAL-Justification.pdf [https://perma.cc/WZH9-5F3Z] (describing
the Board’s justification for entering into the all-payer-model agreement with CMS).
310
. See Vermont All-Payer ACO Model, CTRS. FOR MEDICARE & MEDICAID SERVS. (Oct.
26, 2016), https://innovation.cms.gov/initiatives/vermont-all-payer-aco-model/ [https://perma.cc
/3MDQ-XFQE].
311
. Ankit Patel, Rahul Rajkumar, John M. Colmers, Donna Kinzer, Patrick H. Conway
& Joshua M. Sharfstein, Maryland’s Global Hospital Budgets—Preliminary Results from an
All-Payer Model, 373 N. ENG. J. MED. 1899, 1899 (2015).
312
. See Nancy Remsen, Hospitals in Vermont Anticipate Modest Budget Increases Next
Year, SEVEN DAYS (July 23, 2015), http://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2015
/07/23/hospitals-in-vermont-anticipate-modest-budget-increases-next-year [https://perma.cc
/5RBM-CYR6] (reporting that the Chair of the Green Mountain Care Board, Al Gobeille,
noted that the average rate increase Vermont hospitals requested from insurers was only
4.3%, the lowest rate increase in fifteen years); see also Erin Mansfield, Special Report:
Despite Regulation, Hospital Profits Up, VT DIGGER (July 17, 2016)
http://vtdigger.org/2016/07/17
/special-report-despite-regulation-hospital-profits-up/ [https://perma.cc/9A76-JUJH].
313
. David U. Himmelstein, Miraya Jun, Reinhard Busse, Karine Chevreul, Alexander
Geissler, Patrick Jeurissen, Sarah Thomson, Marie-Amelie Vinet & Steffie Woolhandler, A
Comparison of Hospital Administrative Costs in Eight Nations: US Costs Exceed All by Far,
33 HEALTH AFF. 1586, 1589, 1592 (2014) (explaining that U.S. hospitals spend more than
25% of all costs on administration, driven by the complexity of the reimbursement system
and the mode of capital funding).
112 INDIANA LAW JOURNA L [Vol. 92:55
the rate schedule could be based on Medicare rates, and to the extent that Medicare
is not included in the payment system, the rate setting entity could express private
rates as a simple multiplier of Medicare rate.
Rate setting could allow prices to vary between providers, but the variation in
price would reflect differences in quality rather than market power as it does
now.
314
Thus, under a rate-setting regime, you could still have an element of
competition between providers on the basis of value and quality or services offered.
One of the biggest challenges of rate setting is political. The major hospital sys-
tems whose prices would be constrained the most are often extremely powerful
entities, the engines of local economies and jobs. A lesson from the many states
that implemented and later abandoned rate setting in the 1980s is that the rate-
setting agency must be structured to avoid regulatory failure from bureaucratic
complexity and regulatory capture.
315
Regulatory complexity and inflexibility can
be avoided by using standard payment formulas rather than individual budget
review.
316
A global budget approach may also get regulators out of the difficult
business of setting specific rates for each item and service and instead let them
focus on total hospital budgets, which may be more flexible and less complex.
Ensuring the independence of the rate setting authority from excessive industry or
political influence is essential to avoiding regulatory capture. Agency independence
can be protected by prohibiting commissioners from having affiliations with
regulated providers
317
and implementing accountability measures, such as federal
oversight under a Medicare waiver, to counteract local political pressure to loosen
standards or make special exceptions.
318
Another significant challenge with rate setting is that it only addresses the price
half of the cost-control equation.
319
Rate regulation must be paired with global
budgets, volume adjustments, or other population-based payments to control the
tendency to increase utilization. Both Maryland and West Virginia demonstrated
that rate setting can control costs-per-case quite effectively, but not volume.
314
. COMMONWEALTH OF MASS. HEALTH POLICY COMM’N, 2015 COST TRENDS REPORT:
PROVIDER PRICE VARIATION 14–15 (2015), http://www.mass.gov/anf/budget-taxes-and
-procurement/oversight-agencies/health-policy-commission/publications/2015-ctr-ppv.pdf
[https://perma.cc/ZCH7-3L8Q] (noting that price variation under Maryland’s value-based
factors is substantially less than the variation in Massachusetts, which is driven largely by
provider market power); MURRAY & BERENSON, supra note 294, at 10–11.
315
. MURRAY & BERENSON, supra note 294, at 72–73.
316
. Id.
317
. West Virginia’s Health Care Authority, for example, is an autonomous body within
the state’s Department of Health and Human Resources, and it is made up of three full-time
board members who cannot have financial or employment relationships with any hospital or
health care organization. Id. at 31.
318
. Id. at 73–74.
319
. See Mark Pauly & Robert Town, Maryland Exceptionalism? All-Payers Regulation
and Health Care System Efficiency, 37 J. HEALTH POL. POL’Y & L. 697, 699 (2012); Kevin
Outterson, All-Payer Rate Setting in JAMA: A “Maryland Miracle”?, INCIDENTAL
ECONOMIST (Sept. 14, 2011), http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/all-payer-rate-
setting-in-jama
-a-maryland-miracle/#comments [https://perma.cc/GH5D-HS7G].
2016] DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF HEALTH CARE INTEGRATION 113
Maryland’s 2014 Medicare waiver adds global budgets to its rate-setting program,
which is no easy feat, but it is a necessary adjustment to control both the price and
utilization components of health care spending. Vermont’s all-payer model builds
on an ACO design, in which the ACO will receive a population-based payment for
every person attributed to it, whether a Medicare beneficiary or privately insured
patient.
320
In sum, in states where competition is no longer functioning to keep provider
prices in check, rate regulation may be the preferred strategy, or the last best hope
for counteracting the price effects of health care integration. To set rates or global
budgets, provider rate regulation must be built on a foundation of information from
an APCD or similarly comprehensive and detailed claim data. The ingredient of in-
dependence is necessary to avoid regulatory failure from capture by powerful
providers.
CONCLUSION
Bending the health care cost curve requires constraining both utilization and
price. Reducing fragmentation in health care can help reduce overutilization by
offering incentives to promote collaboration and integration. But increased health
care integration is a double-edged sword. Efforts to integrate health care to achieve
benefits in terms of quality and reduced utilization can also lead to increased
market power and prices, which could potentially defeat much or all of the cost
savings from reduced utilization.
There are currently few systemic checks on the growing pricing power of inte-
grated health care providers. Federal antitrust and cost-control policies are limited
in their abilities to control private health care price increases, particularly new
forms of vertical integration driven by health reforms like ACOs. This creates both
an opportunity and an obligation for states to address rising prices stemming from
health care integration and consolidation.
The way to manage the double-edged sword of health care integration is to en-
courage beneficial integration but pair it with oversight on price and quality. States
have a menu of policy options, and the particular policy recipe will vary by state,
but three ingredients are necessary for effective oversight: (1) Information—states
must have a means to collect and analyze price, quality, utilization, and market
data, such as an all-payer claims database, in order to determine which policy
choices to select and to evaluate their success; (2) Independence—state oversight
bodies must be insulated from the powerful providers they oversee; and (3)
Regulatory Authority—state oversight bodies must have the authority to enforce or
impose limits on providers’ prices when they become too high. If we are to control
our personal and national health care spending, states have a critical role to play in
overseeing health care integration and private health care price increases.
320
. See Green Mountain Care Bd., supra note 303, at 5–6.
