Health care markets fail to satisfy many requirements for perfect competition, including large numbers of consumers and firms, zero search costs, and marketability of all goods and services. Over time, health care markets have evolved to overcome the resulting inefficiencies. We combine the...

In this chapter we review issues relating to antitrust and competition in health care markets. The chapter begins with a brief review of antitrust legislation. We then discuss whether and how health care is different from other industries in ways that might affect the optimality of competition....