By Barak D. Richman & Kevin A. Schulman –
The remarkable proposals for mergers of four of the five largest health insurance companies in the United States, Anthem with Cigna and Aetna with Humana, would have transformed the industry. The U.S. Department of Justice successfully filed to block these mergers due to concerns over market concentration. In this paper, we examine the structure of health care markets that led to these merger proposals, examine some specific questions about antitrust theory in this case, examine alternative theories of antitrust regulation including those addressing innovation and market entry and conclude with a new model to consider the market itself in developing theories of antitrust enforcement.
