The U.S. Supreme Court has decided its first antitrust case in almost three years, establishing a new rule that in the two-sided credit card network market, a plaintiff must analyze both the merchant services side and the consumer cardholder side for anti-competitive effects, even if the alleged anti-competitive conduct lies squarely on one side of the market. This article discusses the potential application of the Supreme Court decision in Ohio v. American Express Co. to antitrust analysis in cases and transactions in the American health care sector.

The parallels between two-sided credit card markets and two-sided insurance markets are clear, as noticed by the amici in American Express. Given the recent appeal of vertical transactions, and several ongoing antitrust cases involving health insurance networks, the applicability of a two-sided market analysis in the health insurance space will inevitably be in front of courts in due course.

Originally published in Law360 on July 17, 2018.