States Fill Gaps in FTC Health-Care Consolidation Crackdown (1)

States are increasingly enacting laws requiring hospitals and other health-care providers to notify them about smaller mergers or acquisitions, supporting the work of federal antitrust enforcers probing the health-care sector.

Federal Trade Commission officials and health policy researchers say health-care consolidation drives up medical costs and erodes the quality of patient care. But such transactions have continued despite a series of successful hospital merger challenges in recent years, including four abandoned deals following FTC lawsuits in 2022 alone. That’s in part because federal enforcers don’t always know these deals are happening.

“We’re seeing systems that are getting larger and larger ...