Every year, American medical students and graduates participate along with foreign-trained physicians in a national matching plan to obtain a position in an accredited resident training program.
[2] The three physicians who launched the suit alleged that the NRMP Matching program was an anti-competitive practice, claiming that: The defendants challenged the admissibility of the lawsuit with several arguments, including a lack of jurisdiction [4] and that the plaintiffs had not been injured.
The federal district court did allow the case to proceed against 17 defendants, ruling: ... the Court finds that plaintiffs adequately have alleged a common agreement to displace competition in the recruitment, hiring, employment and compensation of resident physicians and to impose a scheme of restraints that has the purpose and effect of fixing, artificially depressing, standardizing and stabilizing resident physician compensation and other terms of employment among certain defendants.
[4]The lawsuit ended when Congress enacted legislation as a rider added to an unrelated bill (the Pension Funding Equity Act) that exempted participation in a matching program from federal antitrust laws.
[3] The rider praised the 50-year-old Matching Program, saying that "[a]ntitrust lawsuits challenging the matching process, regardless of their merit or lack thereof, have the potential to undermine this highly efficient, pro-competitive, and long standing process" and "would divert the scarce resources of our country's teaching hospitals and medical schools from their crucial missions of patient care, physician training, and medical research"[2] The bill containing the rider was signed into law by President George W. Bush on April 8, 2004.