By Brazil Stock Guide — Brazil’s antitrust watchdog Cade may close a nearly 30-year-old investigation into alleged medical fee-setting by a physicians’ association in Brasília, after the group formally requested that the case be dismissed on statute-of-limitations grounds.
The Association of Physicians at Private Hospitals in the Federal District (AMHP/DF) filed its request on Tuesday (October 13), after the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (Cade), Brazil’s competition regulator, itself raised the possibility that its authority to impose penalties had expired.
The case highlights an extraordinary delay in Brazil’s antitrust enforcement system: an investigation launched in 1996, suspended in 2001 and still unresolved nearly seven years after the court proceedings that prompted its suspension reached a final conclusion.
The investigation was opened in November 1996 by the Justice Ministry’s former Secretariat of Economic Law (SDE) to examine suspected price coordination and potentially anti-competitive conduct in the private healthcare market.
Documents from the time show that, at a June 3, 1996 meeting, the association agreed on a medical fee coefficient of R$0.40, discounted to R$0.34 for payments made within 10 business days. The coefficient served as a reference for calculating medical fees in negotiations with healthcare service purchasers.
The association’s clients at the time included state-controlled oil producer Petrobras, electricity company Eletronorte, telecommunications operator Embratel, power utility Furnas, state-owned lender Caixa Econômica Federal and Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice.
The dispute reflected broader tensions over how physicians were paid by health insurers and other organizations purchasing medical services. While competition authorities suspected doctors of coordinating prices, the association accused the Committee for the Integration of Closed Healthcare Assistance Entities (CIEFAS), which represented healthcare purchasers, of attempting to impose uniform payment rates.
Contemporaneous records also show that association members discussed suspending services covered by certain healthcare agreements if negotiations failed. The proposal was left for consideration at a subsequent meeting, and the documents reviewed do not establish that any suspension was carried out.
Court defeat
Cade suspended the investigation in March 2001 while awaiting the outcome of litigation involving an earlier case against the same association.
In that proceeding, identified as Case No. 157/94, Cade had imposed a R$5,308 fine on AMHP/DF for alleged anti-competitive practices involving medical fee schedules.
A federal court overturned the penalty, and Brazil’s Federal Regional Court for the First Region (TRF-1) upheld that ruling in September 2011.
The appeals court found that a professional association’s publication of minimum medical fees in a non-binding schedule did not, under the circumstances examined, amount to a violation of competition law.
Cade appealed to Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice (STJ), but its special appeal was not admitted on procedural grounds. The court’s Second Panel rejected a further internal appeal in October 2019, leaving the lower court’s ruling intact.
The judgment became final on February 10, 2020.
Yet the administrative investigation launched in 1996 remained inactive until March 2026.
According to the case records, the last administrative order had been issued in July 2019. After the council member overseeing the case completed his term, the proceedings were not reassigned to a new rapporteur.
It was not until July 2026 that Cade’s own federal legal office formally reported the outcome of the litigation to the administrative proceedings.
Statute of limitations
In a September order subsequently endorsed by Cade’s governing tribunal in October, acting president Diogo Thomson de Andrade invited the medical association to address whether the government’s power to pursue the case had expired, given the prolonged inactivity.
In its filing on Tuesday, the association argued that the proceedings had remained dormant for more than six years and seven months, well beyond the three-year threshold under Brazilian law for prescrição intercorrente, a form of statute of limitations triggered by prolonged inactivity in pending administrative proceedings.
Its lawyers also argued that, even if the period before the related court case became final in February 2020 were excluded, the subsequent administrative inactivity would still exceed the statutory limit.
Alternatively, the association is seeking dismissal under the general five-year limitation period governing administrative penalties, or on the grounds that the case has lost its purpose following the final court ruling in the related proceeding.
The association also argues that imposing another penalty for substantially the same conduct could violate the prohibition against double punishment.
Cade has yet to issue a final ruling on whether the investigation is time-barred. Its latest order sought the association’s arguments before deciding whether to close the case.
Brazil Stock Guide understands that the proceedings are now expected to be brought to a close, nearly three decades after the investigation began.
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