The Justice Department issued a stern warning to the nation's doctors today that they are under surveillance for evidence of price fixing and other violations of the antitrust laws.Assistant Attorney General Charles R. Rule, head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, told members of the American Medical Association's House of Delegates that agreements by doctors to reduce medical competition and thus harm their patients' interest "can be hazardous to your personal freedom.""You can go to jail," he said.The Justice Department's enforcement policy "is necessary to insure that society's decision to rely on competition to hold down health care costs will not be frustrated by a handful of greedy individuals."The assistant attorney general gave . . . advice to doctors: Do not make any agreement with any competing independent doctors on prices or fee schedules, on patients you will serve or locations from which you will draw patients or on joint refusal to offer services to alternative health delivery systems.
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