Banning "Pay-For Delay" Settlements and Resale Price Maintenance are Senate Antitrust Subcommittee's Top Legislative Priorities

By Robert Magielnicki

In a recent interview, Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights, discussed the subcommittee's legislative priorities for 2010. At the top of the list is passage of the Preserve Affordable Access to Generics Act, which would prevent anticompetitive "pay-for-delay" patent settlements in which a brand-name pharmaceutical company pays a generic drug maker millions of dollars in exchange for an agreement to stop selling a generic version of the drug.
 

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DOJ Antitrust Chief Promises Careful Monitoring of Health Insurance Market While Encouraging Innovation and Efficiency in Health Care Delivery

By Robert Magielnicki

In a May 24, 2010 speech to the Antitrust in Healthcare Conference, Christine A. Varney, the Chief of DOJ's Antitrust Division, emphasized the importance of antitrust enforcement in preserving vigorous competition in health insurance markets, and of encouraging innovation and efficiency in health care delivery while preserving competitive markets.
 

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Antitrust Division Will Not Challenge Cost Information Exchange Program in California

By Jennifer Driscoll-Chippendale

In a Business Review Letter[1] dated April 26, 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division (hereinafter, “the Division”) stated that it would not challenge a data sharing program proposed by three health care associations located in California. From the Division’s vantage point, the program posed little risk of facilitating anticompetitive conduct; rather, the most likely effect of the program would be to increase transparency about the relative costs and utilization rates of hospitals that participated in the survey.
 

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A Window into Washington: Proposed Legislation to Prohibit Resale Price Maintenance Agreements

By Heather Cooper and Jennifer Driscoll-Chippendale

Congress has taken preliminary steps to adopt legislation that would restore the rule that minimum resale price agreements between manufacturers and retailers, distributors or wholesalers, violate the Sherman Act without requiring proof of their anticompetitive effects.
 

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