WASHINGTON — President Obama’s campaign to cut health costs by $2 trillion over the next decade, announced with fanfare two weeks ago, may have hit another snag: the nation’s antitrust laws.
Antitrust lawyers say doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and drug makers will be running huge legal risks if they get together and agree on a strategy to hold down prices and reduce the growth of health spending.
Robert F. Leibenluft, a former official at the Federal Trade Commission, said, “Any agreement among competitors with regard to prices or price increases — even if they set a maximum — would raise legal concerns.”
Already, some leaders of the health care industry who appeared at the White House on May 11 say the president may have overstated their cost-control commitment. Three days after the gathering, hospital executives said that they had agreed to help save $2 trillion by gradually slowing the growth of health spending, but that they did not commit to cutting the growth rate by 1.5 percentage points each year for 10 years.
White House officials say even the more limited commitment is significant. Under current law, federal officials predict that health spending will grow an average of 6.2 percent a year, to $4.4 trillion in 2018.
Mr. Obama is asking the industry for detailed proposals to control costs. But so far the administration has not offered the industry any relief from antitrust laws and has, in fact, vowed to step up enforcement.
As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama said consumers had suffered because of “lax enforcement” of antitrust laws in many health insurance markets.