US: Sutter Health asks court to scrap California AG’s antitrust suit

Sutter Health has asked the San Francisco Superior Court to dismiss the California attorney general’s antitrust lawsuit against the company, saying it would seriously harm not just Sutter but the entire health care industry.

In March, Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced that his office had undertaken a six-year investigation of Sutter’s pricing and was filing suit in San Francisco to force the health care giant to stop using its market power to control prices and exclude competition.

“We found that Sutter restricted insurance companies from giving consumers more low-cost health plan options that they could choose from,” Becerra said, “and we found that Sutter set excessively high out-of-network prices and impeded transparency by restricting publication of provider cost information and rates that consumers could then use to make good choices. The consequences of these practices for Northern California families are and have been real.”

Full Content: SacBee

Want more news? Subscribe to CPI’s free daily newsletter for more headlines and updates on antitrust developments around the world.