The Affordable Care Act provides an opportunity to create integrated, cost effective, high quality health care systems for Medicare recipients—and eventually all Americans—through the creation of Accountable Care Organizations, or ACOs. One of the most challenging questions facing ACOs is how to provide integration without sacrificing competition and the decreased cost and increased quality it produces. The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Justice have already been carefully scrutinizing these issues. Will some ACOs threaten competition and eventually raise costs for consumers? To what extent can ACOs overcome the barriers set up by current antitrust regulation? How should the lessons from health care reform educate the role of antitrust enforcement and regulation? How should we approach health care antitrust issues in an era of ACOs?
Please join us for a discussion of these and other questions related to implementing the Accountable Care Act in a way that enhances competition, provides better care, and lowers costs.
Introductory remarks:
Christine Varney, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice
Featured panelists:
Christi Braun, Shareholder, Ober/Kaler
Tim Greaney, Co-Director, Center for Health Law Studies, Saint Louis University Law School
Melinda Hatton, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, American Hospital Association
Joe Miller, General Counsel, America’s Health Insurance Plans
Sharis Pozen, Chief of Staff of the Antitrust Division, Department of Justice
Moderated by:
David Balto, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress