The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice today released a revised schedule for the sessions of their joint hearings on health care and competition law and policy originally scheduled for May 21-23 and May 29-30. The hearings will now be held May 27-30 and June 10-12 at the FTC Conference Center at 601 New Jersey Avenue, N.W., Washington D.C. Morning sessions will be held from 9:15 a.m. until approximately 12:30 p.m. Afternoon sessions will be held from 2:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m.

The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice anticipate holding additional hearings on June 25-27, 2003. Information on those hearings will be released shortly. No hearings will be held during July and August 2003. The hearings will begin again in September 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 specific 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, D.C. 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.