The Sherman Act was passed in 1890. The Clayton Act in 1914. And they have hardly changed since. Last month, Senator Amy Klobuchar, the new chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, proposed an overhaul of the antitrust laws: CLERA, the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act.  If passed, CLERA would constitute the most significant change to antitrust law in a least a generation. In particular, it would also pose substantial new antitrust concerns for technology companies seeking to engage in what have been standard mergers and acquisitions.

The regulation of drug prices has received significant recent bipartisan support in Congress. Democrats and Republicans in both houses have proposed approximately eighty bills relating to drug pricing over the past two years. The charts below summarize the key provisions of representative bills.[i]

Although the proposed price-regulating mechanisms differ from bill to bill, the bills do not indicate a clear difference in the parties’ goals when viewed at a high level. Many of the proposed bills focus on price transparency as well as reporting to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Certain bills would require pharmaceutical manufacturers to provide data on, and justifications for, the pricing of certain drugs that would exceed specified price increase limits. These bills usually include penalties for reporting failures; however, they usually do not provide a procedure to lower a price that triggers the reporting provisions. Instead, they often establish or enhance public databases for the reported information, and some go as far as requiring pharmacists to communicate this information to the patient at the point of sale.

Effective as of January 1, 2020, all civil litigants in California will have additional discovery burdens. The California Code of Civil Procedure now requires “[a]ny documents or category of documents produced in response to a demand for inspection, copying, testing, or sampling shall be identified with the specific request number to which the documents respond.”  Cal. Civ. Pro. § 2031.280(a). This is a major departure from the prior rule. Responsive documents can no longer be produced as they were “kept in the usual course of business.”  This new requirement applies to all pending cases in California, regardless of whether a case commenced prior to the amendment’s effective date of January 1, 2020. 

West Virginia recently passed legislation aimed at shielding an in-state hospital merger from antitrust review by the Federal Trade Commission, and if the West Virginia Health Care Authority and West Virginia Attorney General approve the merger, other states could follow suit. Recent developments, including the FTC’s reaction to West Virginia’s proposed legislation, preview how future battles between the FTC and other states may unfold as the FTC continues to oppose state action grants of immunity from federal antitrust laws.