Peter Orszag Wants Antitrust Opposition to Healthcare Mergers to Be Stopped

Peter Orszag played a key role in crafting the Affordable Care Act. Now he wants federal antitrust regulators to relax their scrutiny of the health care deals he acknowledges the act encouraged—and that make big money for his investment bank.

Orszag’s comments, made on television last week, reveal how policymakers can profit from the laws they help create. In this case, the largest piece of health care legislation in the past half-century has been a source of wealth for financial advisers who help hospitals, health insurers and other large companies merge with each other.

Orszag, CEO of Lazard, served in the Obama administration and was an architect of the ACA. Last week, he lamented how antitrust reviewers at Lina Khan’s Federal Trade Commission and Jonathan Kanter’s Antitrust Division at the Justice Department were increasingly thwarting or delaying deals that have proliferated since the law took effect in 2010.