While it is up to the Justice Department to ultimately decide whether to file a lawsuit to stop a merger, states provide data to the department on how the mergers would affect their jurisdictions and conduct joint calls to gather data from the companies, as well as critics and supporters of the deals.
One of the most controversial deals last year, the proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable by Comcast, attracted about two dozen state attorneys general who joined the federal antitrust review. Comcast abandoned the plan in the face of regulatory opposition.
The chief executive of Anthem, Joseph Swedish, said in an interview that the decision of the state attorneys general to join with the Justice Department was “a good thing.”
“The states created this path with the DOJ (Justice Department) to promote education, engagement. They develop a lot of insights so that when the DOJ does rule, our work with all of these states is probably enhanced quite a bit because we are not starting from scratch,” he said.