© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden holds a campaign rally ahead of the state’s Democratic presidential primary, in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. February 4, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
By Jarrett Renshaw and David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Biden administration on Tuesday launched an interagency effort to crack down on inflated prices, limiting what banks can charge for late credit card payments and reviewing the role of private equity in healthcare deals.
The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are leading a joint “strike force” aimed at stopping illegal corporate behavior that hikes prices on Americans through anticompetitive or fraudulent business practices, administration officials said.
Separately, the FTC, the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) launched a joint inquiry on the “impact of corporate greed in health care” focusing on transactions involving private equity.
The inquiry seeks to understand how private equity deals “may increase consolidation and generate profits for firms while threatening patients’ health, workers’ safety, quality of care, and affordable health care for patients and taxpayers.”
The agencies issued a Request for Information (RFI) requesting public comment on healthcare deals conducted by health systems, private equity and other asset managers.
The administration will also finalize a rule that slashes credit card fees from an average of $31 down to $8, and another that gives ranchers and farmers more leverage when negotiating contracts with meat-packers, officials said.
The moves to address rising costs come as Democratic President Joe Biden and his allies try to change views among the many American voters unhappy with his economic stewardship.
Biden is set to highlight the steps during the sixth meeting of the Competition Council, which he created by executive order to stop anticompetitive practices in sectors from agriculture to drugs and labor.
Biden has successfully pressured companies such as Airbnb and Live Nation to limit junk fees – or extra charges – that customers pay when booking concert tickets, hotels and airfares.
The White House Council of Economic advisers estimates that the administration’s actions will eliminate more than $20 billion in junk fees annually. The moves to counter junk fees is expected to feature in Biden’s State of Union Speech on Thursday, White House aides say.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Rohit Chopra said the limit on credit card late fees will save American families $10 billion annually, or an average of $220 per year for the 45 million cardholders who are charged late fees annually.
Credit card issuers have been exploiting a loophole created in 2010 that allowed them to escape a federal ban on unreasonable fees by increasing them each year with automatic inflation adjustments, Chopra said.
The Department of Agriculture rule, first proposed last September, prohibits among other things retaliation against producers for activities like asserting rights under the Packers and Stockyards Act, which aims to ensure competition in the livestock, meat and poultry markets.
“This final rule will provide for clearer, more effective standards by which to govern all of this in the modern marketplace,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Monday.
