In three recent hospital merger cases, the courts concluded that the merged hospital would be unable to increase price profitably because of competition from distant hospitals. In reaching this conclusion, the courts found the following: hospitals earn high margins on the last patients that they...

Several theories of nonprofit hospitals behavior predict that nonprofit hospitals behave in the consumer interest and thus do not exercise market power. If these theories are correct, then antitrust enforcement of hospital mergers should be restricted only to those markets in which a nonprofit...