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Doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies clashed Thursday over the merits of mergers planned by four of the five biggest insurers in the United States. The confrontation came at a hearing of a House Judiciary subcommittee that is investigating competition in the industry and how it would be affected by mergers combining Aetna with Humana and Anthem with Cigna. (Pear, 9/10)

Congressional Republicans are blaming the Affordable Care Act for a wave of mergers and consolidations by hospitals, pharmaceuticals and insurers, which, they say, are costing consumers money and choice. That new interest in consolidation in the health care field is bringing unwanted political attention to the proposed Aetna-Humana and Anthem-Cigna mergers, which came under congressional scrutiny Thursday. (Radelat, 9/10)

Everybody’s worried about consolidation in the health care sector. But hardly anyone can agree on which areas of competition merit the most concern. Hospitals are raising alarms about a pair of blockbuster insurance mergers that would reduce the number of major national players from five down to three. Insurers point to hospitals, citing studies showing that hospital mergers increased 44 percent between 2010 and 2014, with more than 400 acquisitions completed. Doctors complain that they’re stuck in the middle, with independent medical practices an endangered species. (Demko, 9/10)

Now that a federal judge has ruled the latest challenges to the Affordable Care Act can proceed, it means another round of legal uncertainty that the giant healthcare sector will need to grapple with. Carnegie Mellon economist George Loewenstein, who has spent a lot of time with health insurance executives lately, says they are not a very happy crowd. (Gorenstein, 9/10)

Implementation of the fine print of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has resulted in a bit of a squabble among money interests in the federal government. As part of its role in the PPACA rollout, the Internal Revenue Service is charged with monitoring taxpayer returns to make sure they’re in compliance with section of the act. For instance, are taxpayers’ household incomes too high or low to justify any premium subsidies they may have received? Have they purchased or at least applied for coverage as require by law? IRS’s solution to gathering and analyzing this data: the Coverage Data Repository, where states were to funnel the necessary data for the 2014 tax season. But how well was IRS performing this role? Another branch of Treasury dropped by to find out. (Cook, 9/10)