UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Federal Trade Commission
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20580
Office of Commissioner
Alvaro M. Bedoya
Opening Statement of Commissioner Alvaro M. Bedoya, Federal Trade Commission
before the U.S. House of Representatives, Energy & Commerce Committee
Subcommittee on Innovation, Data, and Commerce
“The Fiscal Year 2025 Federal Trade Commission Budget”
July 9, 2024
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Schakowsky, members of the
Subcommittee. Before I start, I want to note I’m speaking just for myself, and when I talk about
corporate conduct, I’m talking about
allegations
from FTC charging documents.
I think a lot of people don’t realize that the FTC is actually a relatively small agency with
a very broad mandate. So to give you a sense of how far a dollar goes at FTC, I’d love to
describe just
one month
in the life of our agency. And I’d like to start in mid-December, when
we had a case involving Pompe disease, which some of you may know is a a debilitating genetic
disorder that can kill a child in its first year of life.
Just one company has a monopoly on treatment for this disease. It charges a family
hundreds of thousands of dollars for one year of treatment. When that monopolist found out a
new company was developing new treatments, it tried to lock down those treatments through an
exclusive license. On December 11th, FTC sued.
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Two days later, they stopped that.
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Three days after that, we stopped an anticompetitive hospital merger in the I-680 corridor
in California. Three hospitals competed there. Two were more expensive; those two were owned
by one entity. Those two
more expensive
hospitals tried to buy the third less expensive hospital.
FTC sued.
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And the merger was dropped.
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That same day, December 15
th
, we had a big decision on cancer tests. Cancer
unfortunately is usually discovered
after
symptoms occur. And unfortunately that’s often too
late. So right now, lots of companies are racing, to develop tests that will detect cancer in the
asymptomatic
, before symptoms show up. But just
one
company has the ability to actually run
those tests on its platform. That platform company went out and bought one of those test
companies in what FTC staff alleged was an effort to corner the whole market. FTC sued.
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And
on that day, December 15
th
, a court agreed with the FTC. And soon thereafter the company
announced plans to unwind that purchase.
Three days after that, we announced new merger guidelines. It’s been clear since 1890,
that competition law should make sure that companies compete for our
labor
, they should
compete on the pay and benefits they offer workers. Yet in well over a century, only one merger
has been stopped because of how it would affect labor competition. So FTC and DOJ issued new
guidelines to help law enforcers find and stop those mergers.
The next day we announced a major case on algorithmic fairness. There was a retailer
that was trying to spot shoplifters by scanning the face of every single person who walked in that
store. The only problem was the algorithm did not work. Thousands of times, it identified
completely innocent people as shoplifters. They were stopped, they were searched, they were
accused, they were detained. This even happened to an 11-year-old girl. So FTC staff sued and
stopped that.
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The day after that we proposed updates to our children’s privacy rules to address changes
in how kids are taught in schools, voice-enabled technology, the nudges they receive online.
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Then after that it was Christmas. But
in between
Christmas and New Years, right in that
period, a federal judge granted the FTC’s petition to preliminarily enjoin a merger that would let
a company corner a market for health care ad technology.
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A few days after the New Year, they
dropped that.
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Four days after that, we turned to medical privacy. There was a company was secretly
tracking people when they went to the cardiologist, the endocrinologist, the gastroenterologist,
bundling up that data and using it to sell for advertising. So the FTC sued and stopped that.
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Finally, three days after that, we had a major win on crop control products, on pesticides.
These are major line items for farmers. And so ensuring them access to cheaper generics is
really, really important. But two of the biggest pesticide brands were actually paying money to
block the sale of cheaper generics to farmers. So FTC sued, alongside 10 state attorneys general,
a bipartisan group. On January 12
th
, a federal judge blocked an effort by those two companies to
stop our lawsuit.
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Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Schakowsky, members of the Subcommittee, in a single
month, FTC staff worked to keep health care accessible, affordable, effective, and private. They
worked to keep our kids safe online. They worked to make sure that algorithms don’t hurt
people, and that companies compete for our labor. And they worked to protect the American
farmer, to try to keep those farmers in the black.
And this is just what’s public. And these are just the highlights. I respectfully urge you to
continue what you’re doing, which is strongly supporting the people and the work of the FTC.
Thank you.
1
Press Release, Fed. Trade Comm’n, FTC Seeks to Block Sanofi’s Acquisition of Rare Disease Drug that Threatens
Sanofi’s Monopoly (Dec. 11, 2023),
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/12/ftc-seeks-block
sanofis-acquisition-rare-disease-drug-threatens-sanofis-monopoly
.
2
Press Release, Fed. Trade Comm’n, Statement Regarding the Termination of Sanofi’s Proposed Acquisition of
Maze Therapeutics’ Pompe Disease Drug (Dec. 13, 2023),
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press
releases/2023/12/statement-regarding-termination-sanofis-proposed-acquisition-maze-therapeutics-pompe-disease
drug
.
2
3
Press Release, Fed. Trade Comm’n, FTC Sues to Block John Muir Health’s Takeover of San Ramon Regional
Medical Center (Nov. 17, 2023),
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/11/ftc-sues-block-john
muir-healths-takeover-san-ramon-regional-medical-center
.
4
Press Release, Fed. Trade Comm’n, Statement Regarding the Termination of John Muir’s Takeover of San Ramon
Regional Medical Center from Tenet Healthcare (Dec. 18, 2023),
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press
releases/2023/12/statement-regarding-termination-john-muirs-takeover-san-ramon-regional-medical-center-tenet
.
5
Press Release, Fed. Trade Comm’n, FTC Challenges Illumina’s Proposed Acquisition of Cancer Detection Test
Maker Grail (Mar. 30, 2021),
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2021/03/ftc-challenges
illuminas-proposed-acquisition-cancer-detection-test-maker-grail
.
6
Press Release, Fed. Trade Comm’n, Rite Aid Banned from Using AI Facial Recognition After FTC Says Retailer
Deployed Technology without Reasonable Safeguards (Dec. 19, 2023),
https://www.ftc.gov/news
events/news/press-releases/2023/12/rite-aid-banned-using-ai-facial-recognition-after-ftc-says-retailer-deployed
technology-without
. out
7
Press Release, Fed. Trade Comm’n, FTC Proposes Strengthening Children’s Privacy Rule to Further Limit
Companies’Ability to Monetize Children’s Data (Dec. 20, 2023),
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press
releases/2023/12/ftc-proposes-strengthening-childrens-privacy-rule-further-limit-companies-ability-monetize
childrens
.
8
Press Release, Fed. Trade Comm’n, Statement on FTC Win Securing Temporary Block of IQVIA’s Acquisition of
Propel Media (Jan. 3, 2024),
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press
releases/2024/01/StatementonFTCWinSecuringTemporaryBlockofIQVIA%E2%80%99sAcquisitionofPropelMedia
.
9
Katie Arceri,
IQVIA Drops Plan to Purchase Propel Media After FTC Injunction,
B
LOOMBERG
L
AW
(Jan. 5, 2024
12:04 PM),
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/antitrust/iqvia-drops-plan-to-purchase-propel-media-after-ftc
injunction
.
10
Press Release, Fed. Trade Comm’n, FTC Order Prohibits Data Broker X-Mode Social and Outlogic from Selling
Sensitive Location Data (Jan. 9, 2024),
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/01/ftc-order
prohibits-data-broker-x-mode-social-outlogic-selling-sensitive-location-data
.
11
Fed. Trade Comm’n v. Syngenta Crop Prot. AG, No. 1:22CV828, 2024 WL 149552, at *30 (M.D.N.C. Jan. 12,
2024).
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