Washington, D.C. — Following comments today from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during a hearing with major health insurance company executives, where she described the harms of vertical integration in the healthcare industry and called for policies to break up Big Medicine insurance conglomerates, the American Economic Liberties Project (which started the Break Up Big Medicine initiative) released the following statement.

“Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is absolutely right to call for a Glass-Steagall Act for health care so we can finally address the vertical integration issues at the heart of our country’s healthcare crisis,” said Emma Freer, Senior Policy Analyst for Healthcare at the American Economic Liberties Project. “Companies like UnitedHealth Group, CVS Health, and Cigna Group exert immense power across all aspects of the healthcare system, owning the insurance company that covers patients, the physician practice where they seek care, the PBM that determines how much their drugs cost, the pharmacy fulfilling their prescriptions, and more. The result is higher prices for lower quality, while independent physician practices and pharmacies struggle to compete. A Glass-Steagall for health care would break up these too-big-to-care monopolies and restore power to patients and healthcare workers. Other members of Congress should follow Rep. AOC’s lead and work to get bills like this, such as the bipartisan Patients Before Monopolies (PBM) Act and the Patients Over Profits Act, passed.”

Launched in February 2025, Break Up Big Medicine serves as a hub for patients, independent providers, employer health plan sponsors, advocates, and policymakers to learn more about the fight to end vertical integration, build power as a community, and exert political pressure on policymakers to end conflicts of interest in health care. As of January 2026, more than 77,000 Americans have joined the initiative.

Read Economic Liberties’ 2024 opinion piece, “Too big to care: It is time for a Glass-Steagall Act for health care,” here.

Learn more about the fight to Break Up Big Medicine here.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; international trade arrangements that promote balanced trade and benefit workers, farmers and small businesses; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.