A US district court should reject Surescripts’s pre-trial appeal of portions of an antitrust suit since the health information company hasn’t justified narrowing the case, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced.
Surescripts has attempted to narrow the FTC’s monopolization case on the grounds that the commission lacks the authority as defined by Congress to pursue such a suit.
Those claims should be dismissed since Surescripts can’t point to any supporting legal precedent, the FTC said in a March 27 brief.
Since April, the FTC has sought both a permanent injunction and monetary relief from Surescripts over claims that the health company illegally monopolized the market for electronic prescription routing and eligibility.
The FTC alleged that Surescripts “intentionally set out to keep e-prescription routing and eligibility customers on both sides of each market from using additional platforms (a practice known as multihoming) using anticompetitive exclusivity agreements, threats, and other exclusionary tactics.”
The FTC has stated its case against Surescripts is part of its larger ongoing efforts to end anti-competitive practices that put consumers at a disadvantage and raise the cost of care.
“Surescripts’ illegal contracts denied customers and, ultimately, patients, the benefits of competition – including lower prices, increased output, thriving innovation, higher quality, and more customer choice,” said FTC Bureau of Competition Director Bruce Hoffman in April. “Through this litigation, we hope to eliminate the anticompetitive conduct, open the relevant markets to competition, and redress the harm that Surescripts’s conduct has caused.”
Full Content: Bloomberg
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