Vega Economics was engaged by a putative class of pharmacies in an antitrust case against Surescripts in In Re Surescripts Antitrust Litigation (N.D. Ill. No. 1:19-cv-06627). The class alleges that Surescripts, the nation’s largest e-prescribing network, has engaged in anticompetitive conduct to foreclose competition and leveraged its monopoly power to overcharge pharmacies for routing prescriptions electronically.
Vega's expert analyzed and opined on competition in the e-prescribing markets, or multi-sided networks that exhibit “indirect network effects.” In other words, the value of a network to users on one side depends (indirectly) on how many users are on the other side. The expert examined how Surescripts’s exclusionary contracts limited the choices of users on different sides of the network to utilize multiple service providers (i.e., multi-home) and the resulting adverse impact on market competition. The expert also proposed a methodology to determine whether and to what extent class members were damaged due to the alleged anticompetitive conduct.
The Vega team reviewed the contracts and identified exclusionary provisions contained therein. Vega Economics also analyzed thousands of pharmacies that used Surescripts’s network and which of Surescripts’s billions of prescription routing transactions were subject to such exclusionary provisions. The Vega team also analyzed Surescripts’s pricing of e-prescription routing and its economic cost of providing e-prescribing services.
Vega Economics continues to provide support in this case for Daubert and Summary Judgment motions.