| Laura Alexander, Dr. Richard Scheffler
Health & Pharmaceuticals, Competition Policy
In an op-ed in Milbank Quarterly Opinion, AAI’s Laura Alexander and Professor Richard Scheffler of The Nicholas C. Petris Center on Health Care Markets and Consumer Welfare in the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley build on their recent study, Soaring Private Equity Investment in the Healthcare Sector: Consolidation Accelerated, Competition Undermined, and Patients at Risk, to argue for immediate action to address a coming wave of private equity investment that threatens further consolidation in the already troubled hospital sector.
The authors explain how private equity funds build market power and undermine market stability, largely without scrutiny by antitrust or financial regulators, how this threatens patients and markets, and how the COVID-19 pandemic made things worse. They conclude that additional scrutiny and immediate regulatory action are needed before private equity funds unleash on healthcare markets the large stores of dry powder they have built up during the pandemic.
