My name is Emma Freer, and I’m a senior fellow for health care at the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and advocacy organization focused on the problem of concentrated economic power. 

My research focuses on the harms of health care industry consolidation, including hospital mergers. I also help lead the Break Up Big Medicine coalition, whose 26 member organizations support dismantling health care conglomerates.1 

The proposed cross-market merger between WakeMed and Atrium Health would exacerbate Big Medicine’s harms in Wake County, and I urge you to block it. 

The merging parties have sought to advance this deal in secret, but here’s what we know: Atrium Health is North Carolina’s largest health care provider and a subsidiary of the country’s third-largest nonprofit health system.2 Atrium would like to acquire WakeMed, an independent, nonprofit health system with three hospitals in Wake County, for $2 billion.