Is antitrust the answer to hospital consolidation?

A robust literature on the benefits of competition in the health care marketplace shows that when health care markets are competitive, prices tend to be lower, quality tends to be higher, and people have more choices for care. Competition is a remarkably powerful tool that needs to be wielded more effectively. The good news is that ensuring competition is already the law of the land. The problem is that with the pace of consolidation, monitoring potential anticompetitive effects will be increasingly difficult as the FTC is tasked with examining a rapidly increasing number of mergers. The FTC needs renewed focus from policy makers to ensure that it can do its job effectively.