Antitrust trial to bar UnitedHealth Group and Change merger begins
Hospitals are against the merger, which would unite two of the nation's largest technology and service companies.
Photo: Courtesy UnitedHealthcare
The bench trial in the Department of Justice's lawsuit against UnitedHealth Group and its efforts to acquire Change Healthcare began Monday in federal court and is expected to last 12 days.
The court battle pits the antitrust stance of the DOJ and the Biden Administration against UnitedHealth's contention that its estimated $13 billion acquisition of Change will increase efficiency, reduce friction in healthcare, produce a better consumer experience and lower costs.
UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty and the company's former CEO David Wichmann are scheduled to testify, according to the Minneapolis/St Paul Business Journal.
The DOJ and plaintiffs will have seven days to present their case, and the defendants, UnitedHealth Group and Change, will have five days. The trial is scheduled to conclude Tuesday, August 16.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Hospitals are against the merger that would unite two of the nation's largest technology and service companies. Optum is a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group that serves a majority of payers in this country. Its OptumInsight arm provides data and analytics to hospitals, physicians and health plans.
The merger would unite OptumInsight and Change.
After Optum and Change announced their intent to merge in January 2021, the American Hospital Association raised antitrust concerns. In a letter sent in March to the DOJ's Antitrust Division, the AHA said the merger threatened to reduce competition for the sale of healthcare information technology services to hospitals and other providers.
The deal would result in a large-scale consolidation of competitively sensitive healthcare data and make it available to UnitedHealthcare, the nation's largest insurer. This could distort decisions about patient care, claims processing and denials, while increasing UnitedHealth Group's considerable market power, according to the AHA.
This February, the Department of Justice sued to block the deal, saying it would negatively impact the competitiveness of the claims market.
UnitedHealth Group said it would sell Change's claims-editing business if the deal went through.
In April, Optum and Change extended their merger agreement through the end of 2022.
Optum said last week that it would detail the benefits of the merger during trial.
"The U.S. Department of Justice's attempt to block the combination is without merit and serves only to delay improving the experience and outcomes for all participants in the health system," the company said. "We look forward to explaining how the combination of Optum and Change Healthcare will accelerate innovation, benefit patients and providers, foster competition and reduce costs. The Department of Justice's highly speculative theories on our combination are simply wrong and do not reflect the realities of how our business or the health system works."
THE LARGER TREND
The case can be seen as a test of President Joe Biden's July 2021 Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy.
"This order affirms that it is the policy of my Administration to enforce the antitrust laws to combat the excessive concentration of industry, the abuses of market power, and the harmful effects of monopoly and monopsony – especially as these issues arise in labor markets, agricultural markets, Internet platform industries, healthcare markets (including insurance, hospital, and prescription drug markets), repair markets, and United States markets directly affected by foreign cartel activity," the order stated.
Twitter: @SusanJMorse
Email the writer: SMorse@himss.org
