It is the intent of the Legislature to ensure that the citizens of this state receive high-quality health care coverage in the most efficient and cost-effective manner possible. In furtherance of this intent, the Legislature finds and declares that it is in the public interest to promote various types of contracts between public or private payers of health care coverage, and institutional or professional providers of health care services. This intent has been demonstrated by the recent enactment of Chapters 328, 329, and 1594 of the Statutes of 1982, authorizing various types of contracts to be entered into between public or private payers of health care coverage, and institutional or professional providers of health care services. The Legislature further finds and declares that individual providers, whether institutional or professional, and individual purchasers, have not proven to be efficient-sized bargaining units for these contracts, and that the formation of groups and combinations of institutional and professional providers and combinations of purchasing groups for the purpose of creating efficient-sized contracting units represents a meaningful addition to the health care marketplace. The Legislature further finds and declares that negotiations between purchasers or payers of health services, and health care service plans governed by the provisions of this chapter, or through a person or entity acting for, or on behalf of, a purchaser or payer of health services, or a health care service plan, are in furtherance of the public’s interest in obtaining quality health care services in the most efficient and cost-effective manner possible. It is the intent of the Legislature, therefore, that the formation of groups and combinations of providers and purchasing groups for the purpose of creating efficient-sized contracting units be recognized as the creation of a new product within the health care marketplace, and be subject, therefore, only to those antitrust prohibitions applicable to the conduct of other presumptively legitimate enterprises.
This section does not change existing antitrust law as it relates to any agreement or arrangement to exclude from any of the above-described groups or combinations, any person who is lawfully qualified to perform the services to be performed by the members of the group or combination, where the ground for the exclusion is failure to possess the same license or certification as is possessed by the members of the group or combination.
(Added by Stats. 1985, Ch. 1592, Sec. 2.)