On June 12th, a federal district court approved the the blockbuster merger between AT&T and Time Warner, rebuffing the government’s effort to stop the $85.4 billion deal. This decision is widely expected to encourage similar mergers throughout the US economy. Commonwealth Fund President David Blumenthal, MD, spoke about the potential impacts of this merger on the health care industry in his blog “AT&T, Time Warner, and the Future of Health Care” on the Commonwealth Fund website. The blog cites Petris Center Director Dr. Richard Scheffler’s research on the potential impact of the proposed CVS-Aetna merger, writing that based on Dr. Scheffler’s analysis, “the merger of these Part D plans would significantly reduce competition, and thereby, could potentially increase the prices of drug coverage for Medicare patients.”
You can read the full blog post on the Commonwealth Fund site here.