Antitrust Alert: Blue Cross Blue Shield Antitrust Litigation

In a recent Antitrust Alert, our colleagues Dionne Lomax, Bruce Sokler, Robert Kidwell, and Shawn Skolky discuss the allegations in the consolidated class actions, In re Blue Cross Blue Shield Antitrust Litig., the court's analysis, and its market implications.  In this antitrust case against the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and various individual Blue Plans, a federal court recently ruled that certain allegedly restrictive practices are properly analyzed under the Sherman Act's per se standard, which deems certain types of agreements inherently unlawful. The court's April 5 decision, which relied on two Supreme Court decisions from the 1960s and 1970s, runs contrary to a recent growing trend to apply the rule of reason to modern business relationships by analyzing the competitive impact of restrictions and weighing the procompetitive benefits against the potential anticompetitive effects.