Antitrust Laws Promote Competition

Competition is prevalent in various aspects of life, including sports, school, and jobs. Everyone at some point in their lifetime will have to compete against others in order to achieve a goal or earn a prize. It’s how the world has worked for a long time; it’s survival of the fittest and this minor competition between everyone is how we have continuously gotten smarter, faster, and stronger. Competition is necessary to a certain degree, but how much is too much? It’s definitely not a bad thing, and as long as there’s a healthy amount, it can be beneficial because it fosters self-improvement, and it will push people to go all out and try their absolute best.

A monopoly is advantageous to the society and is encourages by the government if there are high fixed costs and very strong economies of scale. At the same time, it could also lead to unequal distribution of wealth; containment of consumer choice; lobbying and unethical spending.

There are different types of businesses, for example, some use monopolies, trust and pools, while other eliminate competition for higher prices. As stated in “Progressive reformers regarded regulation as a cure for all sorts of socioeconomic and political problems” , “The Sherman Act of 1890 attempted to outlaw the restriction of competition by large companies that co-operated with rivals to fix outputs, prices, and market shares, initially through pools and later through trusts” , meaning, competition is the

In Document 4 “A Call to Action,” by James B. Weaver, it explained to the public through the author's thoughts of that monopolies had too much power and that the monopolies destroy competition and trade. This book was written at the time of when big corporations were taking over and destroying competition. Also, the author goes into detail that they control the price of the raw material, so they can produce their products at a low price and sell it at a low price. By selling that the lowest price, the competitors can not compete are driven out of business or reduce the wages of the workers. This idea can be related to current times were big corporations, such as Walmart, are destroying competition because they lower their prices that the competitors cannot compete with.

Monopolies are quite dangerous economically, and are usually broken up by the federal government, with only two exceptions- electricity, and gas. These are modern examples. A monopoly is the economic term for when a company that makes a product has no competition, and can raise the prices as high as they want. For example, the most obvious and powerful monopoly of the industrial revolution was the railroad monopoly. They made money quite quickly as a shipping company, and destroyed any and all competition as the only transcontinental railroad at the time. It’s leader, Cornelius Vanderbilt came to be considered one of the most powerful people of all time, due to his control over who he shipped for.

Many utilities are monopolies by having the entire market share in certain areas. With deregulation of these utilities, the market becomes open to competition for market share to begin. In terms of regulation of monopoly, the government attempts to prevent operations that are against the public interest, call anti-competitive practices. Likewise, oligopoly is a market condition where there are minimal distributors that have a major influence on prices and other market factors. This causes market failure, especially if evidence of collusive behavior by dominant businesses is found.

The Federal Trade Commission actively enforces antitrust laws to organizations within the healthcare field, including to Physician Hospital Organizations (PHOs). A PHO is a vehicle that enables hospitals and physicians to work cooperatively toward accomplishing several objectives (Physician, 2015). According to Susan Creighton (2004), competitive issues among PHOs can occur when a PHO acts as a contracting arrangement for a network of healthcare providers. The network can consist of groups of physicians, one hospital or several, and also some other entities that offer a bundle of healthcare services to insurance companies and other payors (Creighton, 2004). The FTC states that the core antitrust law principle is that it is illegal for competitors to agree on prices they will charge, except where they come together and integrate in a legitimate joint venture that results in efficiencies or other precompetitive benefits that outweigh the restriction of competition (Creighton, 2004). Agreements that violate the antitrust law can be determined as per se illegal. Per se illegal means that activities, such as horizontal price fixing, or group boycotts, have been conclusively presumed to restrain competition unreasonably even without a study of the market that they occurred in, or an analysis of their actual effect on competition, or their purpose (Burke, et al., 2009). South Georgia Health Partners are an example of a PHO that was charged by the commission on a per se illegal

Antitrust law in the United States is a collection of federal and state government laws regulating the conduct and organization of business corporations with the intent to promote fair competition in an open-market economy for the benefit of the public. Congress passed the first antitrust statute, the Sherman Antitrust Act, in 1890 in response to the public outrage toward big business. In 1914, Congress passed two additional antitrust laws: the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Clayton Act. (The Antitrust Laws. Web.)

In our case, the public would be harmed by not enforcing the non-competition provision. If the provision is not enforced, it would result in the reduction of an embryologist. Since there are no other clinics in Iowa, patients would be underserved. The public would be deprived of medical services because having one less embryologist would increase the workload on the remaining embryologist until a new embryologist is hired. Enforcing the non-competition provision would negatively impact the public. As mentioned previously, the process can be extensive considering there is likely a high demand in Iowa to find employment in this field.

Adam smith explained that monopoly charges any price that it chooses, and that it robs consumers and makes the countries less efficient and poorer. He also explained that competition means that businesses try to charge the lowest price possible, so that consumers could get the maximum value for money and that if they can buy more, jobs in the economy will be more supported and then the country will grow even more richer than it already is. Adam Smith also explained that without the police stopping competition, monopolies couldn’t survive for very long.

* Monopoly Power. Pharmacists often face questions from patients regarding how prices of medications are determined and why, in some cases, they are so expensive. Unlike markets for other goods, in the pharmaceutical marketplace there are a limited number of manufacturers and the medication being sold are not identical, but rather are differentiated. There is a guarantee via patent protection that no potential competitor may manufacture an identical drug and sell it at a lower price in the short run. As a result, the branded manufacturer is able to make profits. Since there is only one seller, the monopolist determines the price of the medicine. This establishes the monopolist as a price setter, permitting prices above the perfectly competitive price by controlling the quantity of medication produced in the marketplace. This is in stark contrast to being a price taker, and accepting a price established within a perfectly competitive marketplace. The end result is that prices are higher under these market conditions than they would be in a purely competitive marketplace.

Competition in economics is rivalry in supplying or acquiring an economic service or good. Sellers compete with other sellers, and buyers with other buyers. In its perfect form, there is competition among many small buyers and sellers, none of whom is too large to affect the market as a whole; in practice, competition is often reduced by a great variety of limitations, including monopolies. The monopoly, a limit on competition, is an example of market failure. Competition among merchants in foreign trade was common in ancient times, and it has been a characteristic of mercantile and industrial expansion since the Middle Ages. By the 19th century, classical economic theorists had come to regard

A competitive market is one that allows easy entry and exit: a market in which companies are generally free to enter or to leave at will. This does not describe the health care market in the US. There are certain assumptions that the competitive market model operates under some assumptions, first is the consumer/patient has full information about the nature of the services required, the anticipated results of their decision and the benefits obtain from the service. This is not true in health care often time the patient is operating at a distinct information disadvantage when they require health care services such as insurance. If a patient purchases health insurance often they don’t know enough information to ascertain if they have

What is a monopoly? According to Webster's dictionary, a monopoly is "the exclusive control of a commodity or service in a given market.” Such power in the hands of a few is harmful to the public and individuals because it minimizes, if not eliminates normal competition in a given market and creates undesirable price controls. This, in turn, undermines individual enterprise and causes markets to crumble. In this paper, we will present several aspects of monopolies, including unfair competition, price control, and horizontal, vertical, and conglomerate mergers.

The major concern of Competition Act is to deal with anti-competitive agreements, abuse of dominant position, combination and regulation of combination. Few of these are discussed below with their specific provisions:-