Washington, D.C. — In response to news that Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Victoria Spartz (R-IN) have introduced the bipartisan Stop Anticompetitive Healthcare Act to expand the Federal Trade Commission Act’s antitrust enforcement to non-profit hospitals, the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement.

“When most businesses engage in deceptive advertising or monopolistic behavior to artificially raise prices or sell broken products, the Federal Trade Commission can step in to defend consumers and the quality companies doing right by them. But its hands are tied when it comes to some of the most important institutions that sick and injured Americans trust their lives with: our non-profit hospitals,” said Sara Sirota, Policy Analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project. “This outrageous gap in the law must be filled with the swift passage of Reps. Jayapal and Spartz’s timely Stop Anticompetitive Healthcare Act, which will ensure the FTC can stand up for patients and workers.”

As laid out in the American Economic Liberties Project’s latest policy brief, “The Harms of Hospital Mergers and How to Stop Them,” research overwhelmingly shows that hospitals, including those claiming non-profit status, are taking advantage of their growing market power to charge supra-competitive prices while delivering lower quality of care and exacerbating workplace conditions. Enactment of the Stop Anticompetitive Healthcare Act will give the FTC the tools it needs to crack down on these practices while creating a strong deterrent against future monopolists. At a time when U.S. healthcare spending is nearing 20 percent of GDP, and hospitals make up the largest chunk of those expenditures, despite Americans facing worse outcomes, measures to lower costs and improve quality of care are essential.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.