The Federal Trade Commission will continue fighting to stop a merger between Penn State Milton S. Hershey (Pa.) Medical Center and Harrisburg-based PinnacleHealth System despite a federal judge’s ruling that would, in effect, probably let the merger proceed, say a couple of experts, Modern Healthcare reports.
“This case goes contrary to FTC advocacy and success in other cases, so I’m sure they don’t want this to stick,” Thomas Greaney, a former assistant chief in charge of healthcare antitrust enforcement at the Justice Department, and now co-director of the Center for Health Law Studies at St. Louis University School of Law, told the publication. “I just think this opinion standing on the books is not a good one for them.”
Jeff Miles, an antitrust expert at law firm Ober Kaler, noted the agency’s concerns with the methodologies used to define the geographic market of the hospitals that the judge used in rejecting the FTC’s arguments against the merger.