Leyla Karakas, PhD

Leyla Karakas is a Manager in the Antitrust and Competition Practice. She specializes in economic analysis of competition; her work currently focuses on cases in the healthcare industry. She has worked on healthcare mergers involving horizontal, vertical, and cross-market components.

Before joining Bates White, Dr. Karakas was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Syracuse University, where her research focused on political economy and law and economics. Her work has been published in top peer-reviewed field journals such as Journal of Public Economics, Games and Economic Behavior, and Journal of Legal Studies. She has taught both graduate and undergraduate courses in microeconomics and game theory. Dr. Karakas has also given numerous seminars at universities and has presented her research in many conferences over the past decade.

PhD, Economics, Johns Hopkins University

BS, Commerce, University of Virginia

• On behalf of UnitedHealth Group, in connection with its proposed acquisition of EpiSource, which conducts risk adjustment for Medicare claims, analyzed potential competitive effects related to the transaction. The merger was completed without a second request.
• On behalf of a large hospital system, evaluated the antitrust implications of two acquisitions. Analyzed potential horizontal effects from the merger and conducted relevant cross-market evaluations.
• In the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation of the pharmacy benefit management industry, on behalf of a large pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), provided economic analysis of the impact of vertically integrated PMBs on the access and affordability of medicines.
• On behalf of a hospital system, evaluated targets for potential antitrust effects and presented findings to the client.
• On behalf of UnitedHealth Group’s health services subsidiary Optum Health in its planned purchase of a large cardiology practice in Florida, evaluated the potential antitrust implications of the transaction. Concerns included effects of integration of the practice with Optum’s insurance business. The Department of Justice cleared the transaction.