Dive Brief:

• Four home healthcare managers or owners in Portland, Maine, allegedly conspired to "suppress the wages and restrict the job mobility" of personal support specialists, according to a grand jury indictment filed Jan. 27.
• The indictment alleged the involved parties entered into an agreement sometime around April 2020. Those involved agreed to pay $15 per hour to uncertified workers and $16 per hour to certified workers. They also attempted to recruit more companies to join the agreement, approaching a fifth home healthcare company that was paying such workers between $17 and $18.50 per hour. Before that approach, the involved parties threatened to submit complaints about that company to MaineCare, Maine's jointly funded federal and state Medicaid program, if it did not retract a rate increase for workers; several members of the conspiracy followed through on those threats days later.
• The alleged conspiracy emerged in the wake of actions from the state and federal government intended to ease business' ability to pay workers during the pandemic. Maine's Department of Health and Human Services had just increased the rate of reimbursement to home healthcare agencies from $20.52 per hour to $26.20 per hour to "allow them to fund pay raises for approximately 20,000 personal care workers." In addition, three of the four agencies had received Paycheck Protection Program loans ranging from $90,000 to $600,000.

Dive Insight:

While the Sherman Antitrust Act may seem less...

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