Traditionally, antitrust has not had a way to quantify the benefits of better healthcare outcomes from a potential merger, to balance them against the potential for increased costs. However, a branch of health care economics lets us make that calculation. It has not been used in antitrust...

Are breast cancer survival rates higher in the United States than in the United Kingdom and France? Are a patient's chances of dying within 30 days after admission to a hospital with a heart attack lower in Canada than in Korea? Are surgeons in some countries more likely to leave “foreign...