On March 5, 2012, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz and Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch testified before the House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government to support the FTC's fiscal year 2013 appropriations request. Among other things, the testimony sets out the FTC's continued efforts to protect competition in the healthcare, technology and energy markets.

The FTC seeks $300 million, almost $12 million below its current budget, to support 1,186 full-time employees and to hire additional employees to investigate and litigate merger cases in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and technology industries. Commissioner Rosch dissented from the FTC appropriations request, stating that the agency should do more to perform its mission with fewer resources in these tough economic times.

Healthcare enforcement continues to be a high priority for the FTC. Healthcare expenditures make up 18% of the nation's gross domestic product, are rising faster than the inflation rate and impose an increasing financial burden on US consumers. In the coming year, the FTC will remain focused on reducing undue costs that result from anticompetitive conduct in healthcare markets.

The FTC's top competition priority is restricting anticompetitive pay-for-delay settlement agreements. This includes patent litigation settlements where a branded manufacturer pays the generic manufacturer to keep its competing product off the market. While the FTC has had a spotty record challenging these types of agreements in court since 2005, the FTC testified that it will not give up this fight. The FTC intends to stop pay-for-delay settlements by both:

On the healthcare merger front, the FTC has recently investigated deals involving hospitals, dialysis centers, pharmaceutical manufacturers and pharmacies. The agency will continue its dogged merger enforcement efforts in healthcare with keen attention to both:

While evolving technologies lead to tremendous benefits for consumers, they also pose challenges to competition. The FTC intends to continue its balanced approach to competition issues in fast-paced technology markets, settling investigations when necessary and closing others. Examples of this case-by-case approach include both:

Because of its impact on US consumers' budgets, the energy sector continues to be a major focus for FTC enforcement. The FTC plans to use a portion of its resources to continue to investigate this sector by, among other things: