In 1975, the Head of Policy Planning, Jim Liebeler, began pushing the idea of applying the antitrust laws to the professions. Acting Bureau Director Bob Liedquist agreed to my proposal to draw up an enforcement plan for applying the antitrust laws and Section 5 to the healthcare industry, which I did with the help of Jonathan Gaines, Dave Wilson, and Maynard Thompson. After our proposal was supported by the Bureau Evaluation Committee and, subsequently, by the Commission, Bob Liedquist expressed concern the American Medical Association would fight us “tooth and nail” – he was right, they did – but the antitrust-healthcare initiative in the Bureau of Competition became one of the Commission’s strongest and most long-lived industry efforts, initially led by Alan Palmer, Terry Winslow, Art Lerner, and many others.

—Dan Schwartz