You, You, You – That’s Who

I’m always leery (e.g. “Why is Dow advertising so much?”) when a company, about which you rarely think - in this case Johnson and Johnson (J and J) -, is advertising on TV. I usually suspect that it is being done to counteract some bad publicity somewhere. So I thought that perhaps the reason was that J and J had exclusive contracts with hospitals that it didn't want changed. So I “googled” it.

I discovered that in 2003 competitor Applied Medical Resources Corp. filed an antitrust suit against a J and J subsidiary for $54,000,000. In August 2006, J and J won the suit in California (see).

But I also discovered that, in November 2003 CONMED filed an antitrust suit against J and J and some of its subsidiaries (see). J and J lost this suit on March 31, 2007 and settled for $11,000,000 (see). Perhaps J and J is worried that some people are turning against it.

Now I understand the desire for exclusive contracts by companies. But the negative side is that hospitals get locked into prices and/or other products (that they might be able to buy less expensively elsewhere). And who pays those prices? As the song by the Ames Brothers in 1953 said, “You, You, You.”