Report warns against overregulating health care

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Lawmakers should resist piling too many regulations on the U.S. health care industry and try instead to foster more competition, antitrust authorities said on Friday.

In a sweeping report on the U.S. health care market, antitrust officials with the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission said imposing too many rules and regulations could hobble competition and ultimately be bad for consumers.

Instead, the government could help consumers more by finding ways to open up the health care market and to get patients more information about price and quality, it said.

“Vigorous competition promotes the delivery of high-quality, cost-effective health care,” FTC Chairman Timothy Muris said in a statement.

The report notes the surge in U.S. health care costs since the 1970s. It acknowledges that market competition “is not a panacea for all of the problems with American health care.”

But it says regulations, like those that mandate coverage of particular medical services, can have unintended consequences, which hurt competition even when they are designed to help patients, the agencies said.

Governments “should consider that such mandates are likely to reduce competition, restrict consumer choice, raise the cost of health insurance, and increase the number of uninsured Americans,” the FTC said in its report.

The agencies also advised state lawmakers to resist proposals to waive antitrust laws and allow doctors to bargain collectively with insurance companies. And it said states should review programs and licensing procedures in an effort to make it easier for new, upstart companies to enter the market.

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