Opinion ID: 1196898
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: WCHCC and WMC

Text: We agree with the district court that WCHCC is entitled to the same status, for purposes of the state action immunity analysis, as a municipality. Cf. Cine 42nd St. Theater Corp., 790 F.2d at 1047. The district court also correctly concluded that the type of anticompetitive behavior by WCHCC that is at issue in this case was a foreseeable consequence of the authorizations in WCHCC's enabling statute. WCHCC's enabling statute created WCHCC for the express purpose of operating a hospital in the public interest. N.Y. Pub. Auth. Law § 3301. This statute also granted WCHCC broad powers to ensure that it would have the legal, financial and managerial flexibility to take full advantage of opportunities and challenges presented by the evolving health care environment, id. § 3301(4), to enter into contracts ... necessary or convenient or desirable for the purposes of the corporation, id. § 3305(11), to provide health and medical services for the public directly or by agreement ... with any person, firm or private or public corporation or association[,]... to make internal policies governing admissions and health and medical services, id. § 3306(2), and to determine the conditions under which a physician may be extended the privilege of practicing within a health facility under the jurisdiction of the corporation. Id. § 3306(6). This statutory language indicates that the legislature clearly foresaw that WCHCC could be party to anticompetitive contractual arrangements with private parties. No active state supervision (by New York) is thus required as to WCHCC's own operations. Nor is a separate active supervision inquiry required as to WMC, the hospital run by WCHCC. It would not make sense to require a separate inquiry into WCHCC's active supervision of WMC when management of WMC, a public hospital, is the specific public purpose for which WCHCC was created and continues to exist under its enabling statute. We also agree with the district court that New York's Health Care Reform Act (HCRA), 1996 N.Y. Laws Ch. 639, does not compel a different conclusion. WCHCC's enabling statute shows that the legislature foresaw that WCHCC would have the power and flexibility to choose from a range of competitive and anticompetitive arrangements for best fulfilling its statutory purposes within an evolving health care environment. [4] Although the 1996 Act encouraged more competition in certain areas of health care, it dealt principally with changing the hospital inpatient reimbursement methodology. It did not specifically override the grants of authority the legislature included in the WCHCC's enabling statute, nor did it de-authorize the type of action taken by WCHCC at issue in this case, nor make that action any less foreseeable. [5]