WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission 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. These hearing sessions have been rescheduled as set forth below.

All hearings will be held at the FTC Conference Center at 601 New Jersey Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. Morning sessions generally begin at 9:15 a.m. and end at 12:30 p.m. Afternoon sessions generally begin at 2:00 p.m. and end at 5:00 p.m.

Date	Morning Session Topic	Afternoon Session Topic
May 27	No session	Quality and Consumer Information: Overview
May 29	Quality and Consumer Information: Hospitals	Quality and Consumer Information: Hospitals
May 30	Quality and Consumer Information: Physicians	Quality and Consumer Information: Physicians
June 10	Quality and Consumer Protection: Market Entry	Quality and Consumer Protection: Market Entry
June 11	Noerr Pennington/State Action	Long Term Care/Assisted Living Facilities
June 12	Financing Design/Consumer Information Issues	Information and Advertising

The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice anticipate holding additional hearings on June 25-28, 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.

Information about the health care hearings is available on the websites for the hearings, http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/hchearing.htm and http://www.ftc.gov/ogc/healthcarehearings/, and from the FTC's Consumer Response Center, Room 130, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.,Washington, D.C. 20580.

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DOJ MEDIA CONTACT:
Gina Talamona
Office of Public Affairs
202-514-2007

DOJ STAFF CONTACT:
William Berlin
Litigation I Section
202-616-5938

FTC MEDIA CONTACT:
Cathy MacFarlane
Office of Public Affairs
202-326-3657

FTC STAFF CONTACT:
David Hyman
Special Counsel
202-326-2622

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