For Release: March 18, 2003 FTC/DOJ Hearings on Health Care And Competition Law and Policy
Schedule for March 26-28, 2003
Sessions
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of
Justice (DOJ) today released a detailed schedule for the sessions of their joint hearings
on health care and competition law and policy to be held March 26-28, 2003. These hearings
will be held at the FTC Conference Center at 601 New Jersey Avenue, N.W., Washington DC.
The Web sites for the hearings are located at http://www.ftc.gov/ogc/healthcarehearings/
and http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/hchearing.htm.
These hearings focus on hospital-related issues. On March
26, 2003, the hearings will begin with a roundtable on general hospital-related issues,
followed by an examination of product and geographic markets for hospitals. On March 27,
2003, the hearings will focus on single-specialty hospitals and hospital contracting
practices. On March 28, 2003, the hearings will focus on issues in litigating hospital
mergers. The hearing sessions on March 26 and March 27, 2003 will commence at 9:15 a.m.
and finish at 5:00 p.m. The hearing session on March 28, 2003 will commence at 9:15 a.m.
and finish at 12:30 p.m.
The hearing session originally scheduled for February 28,
2003 on the Little Rock, Arkansas, market, which was cancelled due to inclement weather,
has been rescheduled for April 11, 2003. The agencies anticipate they will release a
detailed schedule soon for the sessions of their joint hearings on health care and
competition law and policy to be held April 9-11, 2003.
As noted in the Federal Register notice announcing this
event, any interested person may submit written comments responsive to any of the topics
to be addressed. Comments directed at a particular subject considered during a particular
session of hearings must be submitted no later than 45 days after the date of that hearing
session. Comments on broader subjects within the general scope of the hearings may be
submitted at any time after the publication of this notice, but no later than November 28,
2003.
Written comments should be submitted in both hard-copy and
electronic form. Six hard copies of each submission should be addressed to Donald S.
Clark, Office of the Secretary, Federal Trade Commission, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.,
Washington, DC. 20580. Submissions should be captioned: "Comments Regarding Hearings
on Health Care and Competition Law and Policy." Electronic submissions may be sent by
electronic mail to healthcare@ftc.gov.
Alternatively, electronic submissions may be filed on a 3-1/2 inch computer disk with a
label stating the name of the submitter and the name and version of the word processing
program used to create the document. |