Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is urging the Federal Trade Commission to scrutinize recent deals from McKesson and Cardinal Health to buy oncology practices, saying those transactions pose “clear, anticompetitive risks.”
The letter from Warren to the FTC highlights how prominent lawmakers continue to support the Biden administration’s antitrust agencies, which have put health care mergers in their crosshairs. The Department of Justice, for example, has created a task force specifically to “identify and root out monopolies and collusive practices” within the health care industry, to the dismay of companies and the investment banks that advise them.
McKesson, Cardinal Health, and Cencora are the three dominant wholesalers that distribute drugs and medical products. But they have prioritized becoming more than middlemen by also becoming cancer care providers. Just as in other parts of health care that are vertically integrated, there is a large opportunity to profit by being both the buyer and seller of products and services — especially on high-priced cancer drugs.
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