Thomas McCarthy, PhD

In numerous healthcare antitrust liability and damages cases, Dr. McCarthy has analyzed class action issues for health insurers, joint ventures, tying and bundling, exclusive contracts, staff privileges issues, exclusions from managed care panels, hospital monopolization cases, and state action immunity issues, as well as regulatory design issues involving certificates of public advantage for state oversight of hospital mergers.

Dr. McCarthy also specializes in the economics of intellectual property protection, including the estimation of contract, trade dress, trade secret, and patent damages, often for medical equipment and device companies. His damage analysis work covers many other industries as well, including computers, distribution of consumer products, auto parts, video distribution, petroleum, oil spill damages, soft drinks, retailing, and agricultural products.

Dr. McCarthy has testified as an economic expert in federal and state court, as well as before arbitration panels, state insurance agencies, and the International Trade Commission. He testified at three different sessions about monopoly and monopsony issues in healthcare at joint Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and US Department of Justice hearings on Healthcare and Competition Law and Policy.  He has also testified in several notable cases, including on behalf of the Advocate Health System as part of the FTC's recent challenge to Advocate's proposed merger with NorthShore, in the PeaceHealth case, and in the retrospective pharmaceutical merger challenge by the FTC against Lundbeck. 

Dr. McCarthy's public policy work includes analysis of the Medicare system and proposals to add pharmacy coverage for Medicare beneficiaries. He is co-editor and principal author of a year-long, two-volume study of healthcare financing reform in 12 industrialized countries, published by Kluwer. Dr. McCarthy has written several papers analyzing competition and antitrust damages in healthcare, including an article on competition in the physician services market, published in the Journal of Health Economics, as well as articles in ABA publications on antitrust damages in healthcare cases, efficiencies in hospital mergers, and defining geographic markets in hospital mergers.

Before joining NERA, Dr. McCarthy was a staff economist with the FTC. Prior to that, he taught at Oakland University and also served as a graduate instructor at the University of Maryland. Dr. McCarthy is a member of the American Economic Association and an associate member of both the American Health Lawyers Association and the American Bar Association's Section of Antitrust Law, including membership with the Section's Healthcare Committee. He also served on the American Bar Association's Task Force on Hospital Mergers.