Insights

Washington – December 19, 2024: Global Competition Review recognized Crowell & Moring’s Antitrust & Competition Group in its 2025 “GCR 100” – a comprehensive list of the world’s leading competition practices. This year marks the 25th edition of the rankings and the 18th consecutive year that Crowell’s Antitrust & Competition Group has been recognized.

Two significant recent developments illustrate the Trump administration’s increasing focus on policing of hospital contracting practices that limit health plan network design flexibility. On June 16, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division and Ohio attorney general filed a proposed consent decree resolving their civil antitrust suit against OhioHealth. (Prior Alert) Two days later, the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) released a memorandum quantifying the potential economic effects of a broader ban on the types of contracting restrictions at issue in the OhioHealth case and the DOJ's parallel suit against NewYork-Presbyterian. This alert updates our prior coverage of the OhioHealth complaint and summarizes both developments.

When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated the FTC's Combating Auto Retail Scams (CARS) Rule in January 2025 on procedural grounds, some dealers may have interpreted the decision as a signal that federal regulatory pressure on the auto industry had eased. Recent developments make clear that such optimism was misplaced.

On February 20, 2026, the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (DOJ) and Ohio Attorney General (Ohio AG) sued OhioHealth Corporation (OhioHealth), alleging that OhioHealth had unlawfully restrained trade in the market for general acute care inpatient hospital services in the Columbus metropolitan statistical area and the narrower Central Columbus area, respectively. The DOJ and Ohio AG allege violations of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, as well as the Valentine Act (Ohio’s antitrust statute), claiming that OhioHealth leveraged its market power to impose contractual restrictions that blocked payors from working with competing health systems to design “budget-conscious” lower-cost health plans.

Huntington Beach housing fight signals stronger state enforcement of planning law