This post is a little late, but for good reason — I spent the first part of this week in DC attending the 2025 Anti-Monopoly Summit. I’m a senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project, which hosted the event, and I was lucky to moderate a panel on healthcare.
You can watch the full conversation here (along with the other panels and keynotes).
My panelists included former Assistant Attorney General at the DOJ Antitrust Division Jonathan Kanter; orthopedic surgeon Dr. Adrienne Towsen; Executive Vice President at the SEIU Leslie Frane; and Congressman Pat Ryan (NY-18). First, they were a delight to moderate. Second, they all had very interesting things to say!
All panelists had direct experience with corporate consolidation affecting patients, providers, and workers.
As assistant attorney general, Kanter sued to block UHG’s merger with Change Healthcare (the lawsuit ultimately failed, and the acquisition went through, with real consequences for providers), and his DOJ tried to block UHG’s acquisition of Amedisys (the acquisition went through this year, after the DOJ leadership under the Trump administration proposed a weak settlement, which UHG accepted).
After he left the DOJ under the Trump administration, former AAG Kanter gave an interesting interview with Bob Herman of STAT News, expanding on his “platformization” concept of healthcare, which he spoke about in a 2024 speech:
We are at an inflection point. In technology markets, the world has coalesced around a few technology stacks. Incumbent technology firms seek to maintain their dominance in any number of ways across multiple markets. Once industries settle into such oligopolies, it can be hard to remedy the situation.
In health care markets, I foresee a not-so-distant future where a few integrated health care platform stacks will amass a generational hold over health care. It would be a private single payer without any of the oversight, impartiality, or scrutiny attendant to government health insurance programs.
Dr. Towsen spoke about her experience building an orthopedic surgery practice only to watch private equity acquire and strip it for parts. Leslie spoke about how consolidation removes worker power, leaving nurses and home healthcare workers without recourse.
And Congressman Ryan elaborated on a survey that he recently ran in his district about the effects his constituents were seeing from Optum acquisitions of practices in the area. He received over 1800 responses (and counting) describing harms ranging from poor care to incorrect billing.
I wrote a month ago about my return to policy world. This is why! There are real harms from consolidation and corporate power in our economy, and there’s a lot of energy from people everywhere wanting to fix it. More to come.
I’ll close this article with a particularly rousing call to action from former AAG Kanter: