UNITEDHEALTH FACES OFF AGAINST DOJ — The antitrust trial challenging UnitedHealth Group’s acquisition of Change Healthcare is underway before federal district court Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, D.C. The DOJ brought suit in February, arguing that the acquisition would give UnitedHealth insight into competitors’ operations. Change Healthcare provides technology tools to health systems and insurers that help them process claims. United argues that the DOJ’s argument rests on “ speculative theories .” The case will highlight how the Biden administration is shifting traditional thinking on antitrust to deal with technology. At the American Bar Association’s conference on healthcare law earlier this year, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Andrew Forman of the Antitrust Division gave some insight into how he’s thinking about market power in healthcare: “The division has several competitive concerns, including the loss of head-to-head competition, exploitation of competitively sensitive information, and reduced innovation.” The trial will likely end next week. DATA BROKERS NOT GIVING IN TO PRESSURE — Democrats are pushing data brokers to stop gathering information on expectant parents to protect them from potential legal consequences if they seek abortions in states where the procedure is now banned, but they’ve largely struck out, POLITICO’s Alfred Ng reports . Brokers have long sold information on pregnant people, including their trimester status and preferred birth methods. It’s valuable to companies that make and sell products new parents need. Abortion bans that took effect after the Supreme Court turned abortion rights over to the states in June target abortion providers, but abortion rights groups argue that states could weaponize the information against people getting abortions too. “It is shockingly irresponsible for a data broker to bury their head in the sand and pretend their business of tracking pregnancies and selling that information for profit won’t be weaponized by far-right extremists,” said Oregon’s Ron Wyden, who introduced with several other Senate Democrats in June the My Body, My Data Act to limit reproductive health data collection, in an email. With no federal data privacy legislation telling them they must, many brokers aren’t changing their practices. POLITICO found more than 30 listings offering data on expectant parents or selling access to them via email blasts. Most were updated after the court’s ruling. Joe Pych, the CEO of NextMark — a directory of marketing email lists — said it wasn’t a problem to host such lists. “As far as I know, there’s no law today that prohibits prenatal mailing lists. If that were to change and this type of data became illegal, we’d work with the providers to remove these listings,” Pych said. FTC SUES META OVER VIRTUAL REALITY APP — The Federal Trade Commission sued last week to prevent Facebook parent company Meta from acquiring Within, the developer of a virtual reality fitness app, POLITICO’s Josh Sisco reports. The lawsuit figures to be a thorn in the side of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his quest to develop the metaverse. Within makes the Supernatural fitness app, which employs Meta’s virtual reality headset to help users stretch and work out. The move is another sign of aggressive action from FTC Chair Lina Khan, who wants to expand traditional notions of antitrust law to prevent big technology companies from getting even bigger. “The FTC’s case is based on ideology and speculation, not evidence,” Facebook spokesperson Stephen Peters said in a statement.
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