If we are going to suffer from extreme weather issues, it seems appropriate to invoke the old-time Christmas movie where Mother Nature’s squabbling children are causing weather problems. It made us think about how the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is about to be one big unhappy family again. Right now, the bipartisan commission has only three Democratic members, so President Biden recently nominated two Republican attorneys — Andrew N. Ferguson (former aide to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell) and Melissa Holyoak, Solicitor General of Utah. It will be interesting to see how these right-leaning members feel about the aggressive legal reforms underway at the FTC, particularly the draft update to merger guidelines released this week. That announcement follows the FTC’s withdrawal of its 1996 and 2011 healthcare market antitrust policy statements. This is a really big deal for so many reasons, but our headline is that the new merger guidelines will focus on digital platforms for the first time ever. Even as they seem primarily aimed at the general anti-competitive behaviors of giants like Google, Meta, Apple and Amazon, we are very cognizant of the ramifications for the health care system. Without the help of big and small technology companies, our decidedly non-technical traditional health care system players will struggle to bring us into the 21st Century. As we prepare to navigate a new and complicated health technology landscape during a heat wave, we will keep the Ice Miser’s advice to his Heat Miser brother in mind: “Mind your blood pressure, hotcakes. Mother warned you about that low boiling point of yours.”
July 21, 2023 | 3 min read
July 21, 2023
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