Health Care, AI And Antitrust: Analysis And Next Steps

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to permeate the health care industry (and every other part of American life), the industry should be attentive to the risk of anticompetitive conduct arising from reliance on AI and cognizant of the watchful eyes of antitrust enforcers, including the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Last Friday, the DOJ underlined these concerns when it formed the Health Care Monopolies and Collusion (HCMC) task force "to elevate the importance of health care antitrust enforcement."¹ Today, we discuss the application of antitrust law to the use of AI in health care, including recent allegations of algorithmic price fixing in the setting of certain out-of-network rates.