PUBLISHED:September 20, 2013

Richman testifies before House Judiciary Subcommittee on healthcare reform and competition

Barak Richman testifies for House Judiciary Committee hearing Barak Richman

Professor Barak Richman testified on Capitol Hill on Sept. 19 on the competition in the healthcare market and how it might be affected by healthcare reform. 

Richman, the Edgar P. and Elizabeth C. Bartlett Professor of Law and Professor of Business Administration, testified before the Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law of the House Judiciary Committee in its hearing titled “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Consolidation, and the Consequent Impact in Competition in Healthcare.”  An expert in antitrust and healthcare policy, Richman has researched and written extensively on the problem of provider monopolies in the healthcare market.

“Whatever the PPACA may achieve, its legacy and cost to the nation will depend largely on whether market actors, regulators, and antitrust enforcers can effectively address the provider monopoly problem and to instill desperately needed competition among providers,” Richman stated in his written testimony.  “Aggressive antitrust enforcement can prevent further economic harm and perhaps can undo costly damage from providers that in error were permitted to become monopolists. But ultimately, creative market and regulatory initiatives will be needed to unleash the competitive forces that consumers need. Where there is danger, there is opportunity, and competition oriented policies can and should yield substantial benefits both to premium payer and to an economy that badly needs to find the most efficient uses for resources that appear to become increasingly limited.” Read Richman’s written testimony

In addition to antitrust and healthcare policy, Richman’s primary research interests include the economics of contracting, new institutional economics, and organizational innovation. His work has been published in the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law ReviewLaw and Social Inquiry, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Health Affairs.  In 2006, he co-edited with Clark Havighurst a symposium volume of Law and Contemporary Problems entitled "Who Pays? Who Benefits? Distributional Issues in Health Care,” and his book Stateless Commerce is to be published by Harvard University Press in 2015.

In addition to his appointment at Duke Law School, Richman is on the Health Sector Management faculty at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and is a Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics.