December 18, 1995

Merger Watch

The FTC has decided not to disturb a consent decree negotiated in July between Pennsylvanias then acting attorney general Thomas W. Corbett, Jr. and two health care systems planning a merger, Polyclinic Health System and Capital Health System.

Among other things, the Consent Decree requires the consolidated health system to achieve at least $70 million in net savings over five years and to pass on at least $56 million to the community in the form of free or lower cost …

November 6, 1995

Patent place

Reversing events in the federal antitrust investigation of Microsoft Corp., the FTC has taken charge of a patent pool investigation that started in the Antitrust Division in the fall of 1994, FTC:WATCH has learned.

The patent pooling arrangement under investigation as a horizontal price-fix involves patents for machines that use computer driven lasers to perform photorefractive keratectomy, a procedure for correcting myopia by cutting precision slices in the cornea.

In 1992, after a series of patent interference …

October 23, 1995

Global competition hearings begin

Proclaiming an open mind, the Federal Trade Commission has kicked off its promised public hearings designed to help government enforcers think about antitrust and consumer protection in a globally competitive environment.

Introducing what may be the mother-of-all-reinventing government initiatives at an agency level, FTC Chairman Robert Pitofsky framed the hearings as a chance to insure that the competition and consumer protection policies we enforce continue to be relevant in the modern economy. [Pitofsky remarks @ FAXLine No. 1476 (9 pages)]

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October 9, 1995

Health care: FTC tackles a new physician self-referral case and
joins with Justice Dept. to ask 7th Circuit for HMO case clarifications

For almost four years, FTC investigators have been trying to resolve a physician self-referral case involving urologists in Memphis, Tennessee who have allegedly formed a joint venture with a treatment device manufacturer and driven up the cost of lithotripsy the use of ultrasound to break up kidney stones without surgery.

At least one senior economist in the agencys Bureau of Economics …

September 25, 1995

FTC pondering shut down, slashing members’ travel budgets

The FTC’s annual appropriation is a very small part of legislation which includes the State Department, Commerce Department and Justice Department. With the President threatening to veto this legislation as drafted because it eviscerates Commerce and fiddles with foreign aid — and threatening to veto an unacceptable “continuing resolution that would keep the federal government going on a short term basis — there is a chance that on October 1 both the FTC and the Justice …