Justice Department, HHS Partner to Protect Healthcare Markets

The U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) this week to enhance their defense of the nation’s healthcare market.

The MOU strengthens the partnership between the two agencies, thus enabling both to better protect healthcare consumers and workers from collusion, ensure compliance with laws enforced by OIG and the Antitrust Division, and promote competitive healthcare markets. This partnership also supports the objectives of the President’s Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy.
 
“Americans depend on competitive health care markets to meet their most basic needs,” Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division said. “The MOU memorializes our shared commitment to protect patients from antitrust crime and other anticompetitive conduct, while ensuring uninterrupted access to healthcare products and services for patients who need them.”
 
The agencies share an interest in protecting federal healthcare programs and promoting competitive healthcare markets. Both agencies are charged with protecting the people served by federal healthcare programs who have been harmed or may be at-risk of being harmed by anticompetitive and unlawful conduct, with remedies including holding individuals or entities accountable for violations of the law, while preventing further harm to the healthcare system.
 
The MOU signed by Kanter and Inspector General Christi A. Grimm announces new steps the agencies will take to strengthen their partnership. Through coordination in information sharing, enforcement activity, and training, the two agencies will strengthen the enforcement of federal laws, including the full force of OIG’s exclusion authorities and the antitrust laws enforced by the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, while ensuring the continuity of healthcare products and services. In particular, this MOU will allow the two agencies to make referrals of potentially illegal activity to each other, as appropriate, and to coordinate on policy, strategy, and training.

“OIG’s mission is to protect the integrity of HHS programs and the health and welfare of the people served by those programs,” Grimm said. “We look forward to collaborating with the Antitrust Division to ensure that exclusions are imposed where appropriate and the people served by federal healthcare programs maintain access to health care products and services. Through this partnership, we will tackle unlawful behavior across the healthcare industry. This is an important moment in recognizing that protecting competition protects health care markets and ultimately benefits patients and Federal health care programs.”
 
OIG provides independent and objective oversight of HHS. OIG’s authorities come from the Inspector General Act, Social Security Act, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and other statutes. OIG has the authority to exclude individuals and entities from federal healthcare programs for a variety of reasons, including certain violations of antitrust laws. Those that are excluded can receive no payment from Federal healthcare programs for any items or services they furnish, order, or prescribe. To ensure healthcare assets remain in the market and competition is preserved and enhanced, OIG and the Antitrust Division will work together to ensure orderly winding down or sales of assets by excluded healthcare entities or other actions as appropriate.
 
The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division is charged with promoting and protecting competition by enforcing the antitrust laws of the United States, including the Sherman Act, Clayton Act, and other related statutes.
 
Information about possible antitrust violations or potential anticompetitive activity should be reported to the Antitrust Division Citizen Complaint Center.
 
Information about potential fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement in the Department of Health and Human Services’ programs should be reported to the HHS-OIG Hotline.