Do Nonprofit Hospitals Exercise Market Power?

Abstract

Several theories of nonprofit hospitals behavior predict that nonprofit hospitals behave in the consumer interest and thus do not exercise market power. If these theories are correct, then antitrust enforcement of hospital mergers should be restricted only to those markets in which a nonprofit hospital cannot offset anticompetitive behavior by for-profit hospitals. In this paper, we examine the relationship between price and market concentration among nonprofit hospitals in California in 1993. We find that nonprofit hospitals set higher prices in more concentrated markets. This result suggests that antitrust enforcement should challenge those mergers of nonprofit hospitals that create market power without creating offsetting efficiencies.