Washington, D.C. — In response to news that two of the country’s biggest healthcare hospital systems, North Carolina’s Atrium Health and Wisconsin and Illinois’ Advocate Aurora Health, closed on their $27 billion merger, the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement.

“As is often the case with hospital consolidation, the Atrium-Advocate merger serves the best interests of corporate executives at the expense of patients and health care workers,” said Sara Sirota, Policy Analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project. “Hospital mergers almost always lead to higher costs for patients and worse working conditions for nurses, doctors, and staff. Using corporate tricks to evade antitrust scrutiny, like merging hospitals across state lines, won’t change that. Enforcers across government must step in to halt the wave of consolidation sweeping across the hospital industry and take additional steps to ensure all deals are thoroughly scrutinized.”

The two hospital systems, Atrium and Advocate-Aurora closed on their formal combination on Dec. 2, resulting in a newly combined 67-hospital system called Advocate Health — the fifth-largest nonprofit health system in the U.S. This merger comes shortly after a recently announced merger from Sanford Health and Fairview Health, a deal that raises similar concerns around costs and working conditions.

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; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.