Teladoc, the Dallas-based company that sued Texas over its telemedicine regulations, has a new ally in the Federal Trade Commission.
In a letter sent to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court late Friday, the federal antitrust agency sided with Teladoc in the company’s legal battle, criticizing the Texas Medical Board for allegedly misinterpreting case law.
The telehealth company sued last year to block board rules that in most cases require face-to-face contact between a patient and a physician before a physician can issue a prescription.
That threatened Teladoc’s business model, which virtually connects Texas patients to remote, Texas-licensed doctors, some of whom are based out-of-state. The company says its physicians consult patients over the phone for routine medical issues, and patients can upload photos or other information describing their symptoms and medical history.
Teladoc filed an antitrust lawsuit against the regulatory Texas Medical Board in federal court last year, alleging that the 19-member board made up mostly of doctors had behaved like a cartel by passing rules intended to limit competition.
The state has asked the appeals court to throw out Teladoc’s lawsuit, and federal regulators on Friday urged the court not to.
The Texas Medical Board failed to show that “any disinterested state official ever substantively reviewed” the telemedicine rules “to determine whether the rules promote a clearly articulated state policy to displace competition rather than the private interests of active market participants,” federal regulators wrote.
I hadn’t noticed this before now, and I don’t know much about this, though on the surface it sounds like Teladoc has a good argument. I was hoping to find an analysis of this via Google, but the best I could do was this by the hacks at the TPPF that was just boilerplate business/free market rah-rah. Here’s an interview with Teladoc’s CEO from January about the lawsuit, if you’re interested. The suit was filed by Teladoc, the AG’s office is defending the Texas Medical Board, and the feds have only just gotten involved, so this isn’t a typical Texas-versus-feds situation. It is a reminder that not all such cases fall into the usual narrative.
This sounds a lot like crony capitalism in action. Teledoc has built a better mousetrap and the brick and mortar doctors don’t like it and see it as a threat, benefits to the consumer be damned. Texas is on the wrong side of this.
Hey, if we are going to say we are business friendly, maybe we ought to actually BE business friendly. Ask Tesla about that.