Health Economics Expert Witnesses
Health economics shapes how hospitals set prices, how payers negotiate networks, how pharmaceutical and device companies demonstrate value, and how regulators evaluate consolidation, so it surfaces in some of the most consequential commercial disputes in health care. Payers and providers litigate reimbursement rates and contract terms, antitrust matters turn on market definition and price effects in hospital, physician, and health plan markets, and pharmaceutical disputes involve drug pricing, rebates, and claims about cost-effectiveness. Insurers, self-funded employers, and reinsurers contest projections of future medical costs, while acquirers question whether a target's revenue reflected sustainable pricing and utilization. Across these matters, the central question is whether economic claims about health care prices, costs, and value are grounded in sound methodology and data.
A health economist answers that question with the tools of econometrics, industrial organization, and economic evaluation, analyzing claims data, chargemaster and contract rates, utilization trends, and market structure. Depending on the dispute, that may mean estimating the price effects of a merger or exclusive contract, building a cost-effectiveness or budget-impact model to test a product's value claims, or forecasting medical expenditures under alternative assumptions. The same analysis addresses causation by separating the effects of the challenged conduct from broader trends in medical prices, technology, and utilization. Those findings support liability and damages in antitrust, contract, and reimbursement cases, and give counsel a disciplined basis for challenging an opposing economist whose model rests on unsupported assumptions or inappropriate benchmarks.
Health economics includes antitrust economics, pharmacoeconomics, outcomes research, public finance, and cost-of-illness analysis, so the right expert depends on which economic question the dispute presents. The economists we present include an industrial organization specialist who has published on physician-owned specialty hospitals, bundled pricing, and health care merger analysis and has testified on antitrust issues involving hospitals, health plans, and physicians, and a pharmaceutical economist who has published on drug pricing, R&D, and treatment cost-effectiveness and has testified a dozen times on pharmaceutical issues. Others bring expertise in medical price forecasting and hospital pricing, cost-effectiveness analysis, health care costs in workers' compensation and group health systems, and the economics of substance abuse treatment. Round Table Group brings more than 75,000 expert searches for litigators to the work of matching that expertise to your case, and you can start that process by calling us at (202) 908-4500.
