Peter Orszag was instrumental in crafting the Affordable Care Act. Now, he wants federal antitrust authorities to ease up on their sharp scrutiny of health care transactions that he acknowledges the law has encouraged — and that make a lot of money for his investment bank.
Orszag’s comments, made last week on TV, reveal how policymakers can end up profiting from the laws they help create. In this case, the biggest piece of health care legislation in the past half-century has been a fountain of wealth for the financial advisers that help hospitals, health insurers, and other large companies merge with each other.
Orszag, the CEO of Lazard, served in President Barack Obama’s administration and was an architect of the ACA. He lamented last week how antitrust reviewers at Lina Khan’s Federal Trade Commission and Jonathan Kanter’s Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice are increasingly thwarting or stalling deals that have proliferated since the law went into effect in 2010.
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