Dr. Thomas McCarthy

Education

PhD and MA in economics, University of Maryland
(National Defense Education Act Fellowship recipient)
BA in economics, Assumption College

Experience

Dr. McCarthy specializes in the economic analysis of regulatory, public policy, and litigation matters in health care markets. Dr. McCarthy has analyzed the competitive effects of more than 100 health care industry mergers, including evaluating the horizontal and vertical issues created by mergers of hospitals, hospital systems, health insurers, physician groups, physician practice management companies, medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and home health care companies.

In numerous health care 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 health care at joint Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and US Department of Justice hearings on Health Care 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 health care financing reform in 12 industrialized countries, published by Kluwer. Dr. McCarthy has written several papers analyzing competition and antitrust damages in health care, 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 health care 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 Health Care Committee. He also served on the American Bar Association's Task Force on Hospital Mergers.