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Statement on the Antitrust Health Care Advancement Act of 1996 (HR 2925)

by Beverly L. Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN
President, American Nurses Association

September 5, 1996

The American Nurses Association (ANA) joins the other members of the Antitrust Coalition in strongly opposing the Antitrust Health Care Advancement Act of 1996 (HR 2925).

ANA opposes this piece of legislation because of its great potential for leading to higher health care costs both for the government and the private sector. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has determined that H.R. 2925 would result in an increase in government health care costs and in private health insurance premiums. The likely result of these increased costs is a reduction in consumers' access to health care. We already have over 40 million Americans with no or limited access to necessary health care and HR 2925 would threaten to make this daunting figure even greater.

When some physician groups propose that provider health networks should receive more lenient antitrust treatment, they overlook the role that current antitrust laws have played in bolstering competition by prohibiting price fixing and boycotts. In fact, provider networks have prospered under current antitrust laws. Recent guidelines by the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission have provided more guidance and flexibility for providers and practitioners in operating cooperatively within the limits of existing laws. Those guidelines have been revised as recently as August 28 of this year. In view of these efforts by the federal enforcement agencies to respond to changes in the health care industry, we believe that to make wholesale changes in antitrust laws is unnecessary and that it could have enormous consequences, such as spiraling health care costs and restricting consumers' choices and access to appropriate health care.

In addition, ANA has serious concerns about the potential for discrimination against non-physician providers of health care and consumers' abilities to gain access to advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs)--nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, certified nurse-midwives, and certified registered nurse anesthetists. Advanced practice registered nurses provide high quality, low cost health care services to the public and lowering the antitrust protection for non-physician providers, such as APRNs and the many other non-physician providers who make up the health care system in this country, would harm their patients and the health professionals who care for them.

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