To provide Durango, Colorado, residents and Southern Ute Indian tribe members with greater access to kidney dialysis and other nephrology services, Mercy Medical Center, a non-profit hospital, together with the tribe, sought to entice Dr. Mark Bevan to join the hospital’s active staff. When Dr. Bevan declined, the hospital hired somebody else. To convince that physician and others to settle in Durango, and aware that starting a nephrology practice was likely to prove unprofitable for the foreseeable future, the hospital and tribe agreed to underwrite up to $2.5 million in losses they expected the practice to incur. To protect its investment, Mercy made its new practice the exclusive provider of nephrology services at the hospital.
In response, Dr. Bevan sued. He contended that Mercy’s refusal to deal with other nephrologists, including himself, amounted to the monopolization, or attempted monopolization, of the market for physician nephrology services in the Durango area. The district court granted summary judgment to the hospital, and we affirm for two reasons. First, the hospital has no antitrust duty to share its facilities with Dr. Bevan at the expense of its own nephrology practice. Second, in demanding access to Mercy’s facilities, Dr. Bevan seeks to share — not to undo — the hospital’s putative monopoly. That, of course, is not what the antitrust laws are about: they seek to advance competition, not advantage competitors.
I
A
Viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Dr. Bevan as the summary judgment non-movant, they reveal that Dr. Bevan and his associates at Four Corners Nephrology Associates, P.C., enjoy a thriving practice based in Farmington, New Mexico. For years, patients throughout the Four Corners area (where Colorado, *1218 Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona meet) have traveled to Dr. Bevan’s office to receive kidney dialysis and other outpatient nephrology services. These include patients from Durango, Colorado, and its nearby Southern Ute Indian reservation, many of whom require dialysis three times per week. Each round-trip drive between Durango and Farmington can take these patients an hour-and-a-half or more.
In part because of the distance to Farmington and the prevalence of kidney disease in the Durango area, most acutely among members of the Southern Ute tribe, the tribe, Mercy hospital, and the Durango Rotary Club all sought for many years to convince Dr. Bevan to provide kidney dialysis and other nephrology services in Durango. Dr. Bevan consistently declined these invitations. While Dr. Be-van held consulting medical privileges at Mercy, and occasionally took inquiries by phone from doctors there, the last time he entered the Durango hospital to treat patients was in 1995.
Unable to lure Dr. Bevan to town, Mercy and the tribe decided to undertake a joint effort to recruit another nephrologist. After extensive interviews, the tribe selected Dr. Mark Saddler, who agreed to come to Durango in 2005 — but on a condition. Concerned that patient numbers in Duran-go would not provide him with the income he previously enjoyed, Dr. Saddler insisted that the hospital employ him on a salaried basis. The hospital agreed. Anticipating that its new nephrology practice would lose money for many years, the hospital also agreed to underwrite losses of up to $500,000 over seven years, while the tribe agreed to backstop certain additional losses, depositing $2 million into a trust fund for that purpose. In addition, Dr. Saddler was permitted to serve as the director of a new, independently owned outpatient dialysis center in Durango.
Under Mercy’s preexisting bylaws, the employment of Dr. Saddler as a full-time active nephrologist automatically terminated Dr. Bevaris consulting privileges. The point of consulting staff members, the bylaws make clear, is limited to filling gaps in the expertise of the hospital’s active staff: “Consulting Staff consist of providers who offer services required or desired but not otherwise provided by an Active Medical Staff member.” Mercy Medical Staff Bylaws, J.A. at 419. While no longer eligible to serve as a consulting staff member, Dr. Bevan was able, consistent with the hospital’s bylaws, to remain a member of its courtesy staff, a position that allowed him to consult and write orders with the permission of an attending physician.
Unsatisfied with these developments, Dr. Bevan, along with one of his associates at Four Corners Nephrology, filed an application to become a member of the hospital’s active staff, on par with Dr. Saddler and competing with the hospital’s nephrology practice. Mercy’s bylaws did not forbid the hospital from having two active staff members with the same expertise, but they did present at least one significant hurdle for Dr. Bevan. Unlike members of the consulting staff, members of the hospital’s active staff were obliged by the bylaws to reside within 30 minutes of the hospital in order to be available to provide emergency care. To meet this mandate, Dr. Bevan, who continued to live in Farmington, first suggested that he resided in Durango office space. When that gambit failed to persuade hospital authorities, he told Mercy he had leased a residence near Durango, which, on investigation, turned out to be a plot of vacant land.
As these events unfolded, Mercy decided to preempt any future application from Dr. Bevan and his colleagues by designating its nephrology practice — now including Dr. Saddler and a partner — as the sole provid *1219 er of nephrology services to the hospital. Mercy cited several factors contributing to its decision. First, hospital administrators expressed concern that granting active staff membership to Dr. Bevan and other Four Corners Nephrology doctors would reduce the volume of patients for Dr. Saddler and his partner to the point where they would lose technical proficiency or leave for better jobs. Second, while Mercy and the tribe anticipated that the hospital’s new nephrology practice would operate at a loss, they feared that granting staff privileges to other nephrologists would exacerbate those losses, causing the hospital to draw down the Southern Ute and hospital subsidies more rapidly. Ultimately, the hospital feared that money would run out before its practice could become self-sustaining. Finally, Mercy administrators expressed concern that Dr. Bevan would offer a repeat performance of his actions in Page, Arizona. According to them (though disputed by Dr. Bevan), when a competing group of nephrologists opened a dialysis center in Page, about four hours west of Farmington, Dr. Bevan responded by opening his own dialysis center in Page. The town apparently couldn’t support two competing clinics, however, and the competitor clinic soon closed. Shortly after that, Dr. Bevan closed his clinic in Page, leaving the town with no nephrology practice and many of its kidney dialysis patients once again with a four-hour trek to Farmington. In light of its understanding of this episode, the hospital worried that Dr. Bevan’s true intentions were to destroy Durango’s nephrology practice, rather than to increase the quality and quantity of nephrology services in Durango.
B
In response to the hospital’s decision, Dr. Bevan filed this lawsuit. While his complaint outlined various causes of action, for purposes of this appeal Dr. Bevan pursues only his claims that Mercy’s decision to exclude him and other nephrologists from admitting patients amounted to the unlawful monopolization, or attempted monopolization, of the market for “nephrology physician services” in the “Durango area,” in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 2, and the Colorado Antitrust Act of 1992, C.R.S. §§ 6-4-101 et seq, 1 He now stands ready, he says, to reside in Durango and practice nephrology there, but cannot do so without some assurance he might be considered for active staff privileges at Mercy. In due course, Mercy moved for summary judgment. With respect to the antitrust claims remaining in play before us, Mercy raised many arguments, including that Dr. Be-van’s proposed market definition was fatal *1220 ly flawed, that Mercy possessed no monopoly power, that Dr. Bevan suffered no antitrust injury, and that the hospital engaged in no anticompetitive conduct.
Among these various arguments, the district court focused on one, granting summary judgment to the hospital on the basis that it lacked monopoly power or the dangerous probability of achieving it. Monopoly power, of course, consists of “the power to control prices or exclude competition” in the relevant product and geographic markets.
See United, States v. Grinnell Corp.,
II
We review the question whether to grant summary judgment de novo, and will affirm a district court’s decision to do so only if, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the non-movant, we discern no genuine issue as to any material fact and conclude that movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). Undertaking this analysis, we first examine the rationale the district court offered for its grant of summary judgment to Mercy, before then turning to consider two alternative bases the hospital has proffered for affirmance.
A
Dr. Bevan argues that the district court erred in its monopoly power analysis. While the district court focused on the hospital’s lack of control over prices for the government-payer segment of the market, Dr. Bevan emphasizes that at least 1.6% of Mercy’s patients “self pay” and so are subject to unilateral price increases by the hospital. As for the approximately 30% of patients whose bills are paid by commercial health plans, Dr. Bevan asserts that Mercy has requested and obtained general rate increases from commercial payers at least six times in the past three years. He also notes that Mercy has the ability to “balance bill” these patients — that is, the hospital can seek from individual patients any difference between the hospital’s stated charges and the payments it receives from the patients’ health plans. Given these facts, Dr. Bevan submits, a reasonable factfinder could conclude that Mercy holds market power even with respect to patients covered by commercial health plans.
In reply, Mercy stresses that it negotiates reimbursement rates with commercial health plans across a full spectrum of hospital services, and does not negotiate reimbursement rates for nephrology physician services separately from those for other physician services. The hospital also argues that commercial health plans are too powerful to allow it to single out and raise *1221 prices significantly on any particular service, and that there is little or no evidence in the record of it “balance billing” patients covered by such plans. The hospital does not dispute that approximately 1.6% of its patients are self-payers, but submits that it has no history of gouging them either.
The parties’ monopoly power arguments raise interesting questions, including the pertinence, if any, of a firm’s control over discrete, if limited, market segments, such as self-payers. Indeed, how best to analyze market power over submarkets has recently divided able judges in an analogous, albeit different, context.
See FTC v. Whole Foods Mkt., Inc.,
B
Mercy argues that its refusal to deal with Dr. Bevan does not constitute anticompetitive conduct within the meaning of Section 2 of the Sherman Act or its state law analog.
See, e.g.,
Answer Br. at 41-44. We agree. The Supreme Court has recently emphasized the general rule that a business, even a putative monopolist, has “no antitrust duty to deal with its rivals at all.”
Pac. Bell Tel. Co. v. Linkline Commc’ns, Inc.,
— U.S. -,
This presumption should hardly surprise. Allowing a business to reap the fruits of its investments “is an important element of the free-market system”: it is what “induces risk taking that produces innovation and economic growth.”
Id.; see also Christy Sports, LLC v. Deer Valley Resort Co., Ltd.,
While Mercy’s refusal to share its facilities with Dr. Bevan does not constitute anticompetitive conduct sufficient to sustain a claim for monopolization or attempted monopolization, we acknowledge that the parties disagree about how best exactly to label Dr. Bevan’s claim. At oral argument, though not in his briefs, Dr. Bevan described his claim as one for “monopoly leveraging,” with the hospital allegedly using its monopoly over inpatient nephrology services in the “Durango area” to inhibit competition in outpatient dialysis services in the same geographic area. Whether embracing the monopoly leveraging label does anything to help Dr. Bevan’s cause, though, is questionable. Before
Trinko,
some courts of appeals held that a monopolist could violate Section 2 by using monopoly power in one market merely to achieve a competitive advantage in a second market. But
Trinko
undid that, explaining that “there [must at least] be a ‘dangerous probability of success’ in monopolizing a second market.”
At the same time, Dr. Bevan has disclaimed any interest in describing his suit as involving an “essential facilities” claim. "While the label seems in some ways to capture the essence of his argument — he expressly contends that active staff membership at the hospital is critical for nephrologists to be able to compete in the Durango area — we can hardly blame Dr. Bevan for his disinterest in the label, given the Supreme Court’s skepticism about the “essential facilities doctrine.”
See Trinko,
In the end, picking an “epithet” to fix on Dr. Bevan’s argument may be less illuminating than confronting its substance. Cf Phillip Areeda, Essential Facilities: An Epithet in Need of Limiting Principles, 58 Antitrust L.J. 841, 841 (1989) (“[Essential facilities] is less a doctrine than an epithet, indicating some exception to the right to keep one’s creations to oneself, but not telling us what those exceptions are.”); IIIB Phillip Areeda & Herbert Hovenkamp, Antitrust Law ¶ 772, at 199 (3d ed. 2008) (“ ‘[E]ssential facility’ is just an epithet describing the monopolist’s situation: the monopolist possesses something the plaintiff wants. It is not an independent tool of analysis; it is only a label.... ”). The substance of Dr. Bevan’s claim, of course, is that Mercy, after having entered the inpatient nephrology business by hiring Dr. Saddler and investing considerable sums to ensure the success of its practice, engaged in anticompetitive conduct by refusing to share its facilities with a potential rival for inpatient nephrology services. As Dr. Bevan himself puts it, “Mercy barred [him] from providing nephrology physician services on an inpatient basis in the Durango area by denying him medical staff privileges,” Opening Br. at 2, and “having inpatient nephrology privileges is essential for a nephrologist to compete successfully [for outpatient dialysis patients],” id. at 12.
In this, the substance of Dr. Bevan’s claim, our case is analytically parallel to
Trinko
and
Christy Sports.
In both of those cases, the plaintiff argued that a putative monopolist engaged in anticompetitive conduct by failing to provide a rival access to certain of its facilities. In both of those cases, the claim was dismissed as a matter of law. In
Trinko,
the Supreme Court affirmed Verizon’s refusal to deal with its rival because “possession of monopoly power [is] unlawful [only where] accompanied by an element of anticompetitive
conduct,”
Much the same might be said here. Having made a substantial investment in developing its own nephrology practice— indeed, having even tried to secure Dr. Bevan’s services for that practice — Mercy is entitled to recoup its investment without sharing its facilities with a competitor. And doing so may well help consumers. Prior to the hospital’s arrangement with Dr. Saddler, there were no full-time nephrologists in Durango. Now there are two, Dr. Saddler and his partner. As a result, the consumers — the people of Durango and members of the Southern Ute tribe — have greater access to nephrology services: they still may travel to Farming-ton and Dr. Bevan’s practice, but they now also enjoy other, more convenient options.
*1224
Cf. Christy Sports,
At the same time, the record reveals that the hospital correctly anticipated that a nephrology practice in Durango would operate at a loss for many years and would require the hospital and tribe to underwrite those losses. In reaching its decision to deny Dr. Bevan privileges at the hospital, Mercy worried that a contrary course would cause the premature exhaustion of its loss reserves and leave the town without a nephrologist. The record before us thus suggests that to force Mercy to deal with Dr. Bevan well might deter future investments of the sort the hospital and tribe made in this case — and thus to undermine, rather than promote, investment, innovation, and consumer choice, as the Supreme Court feared in
Trinko.
Having noted the general rule that the antitrust laws don’t compel competitors to share, the rationales for that rule, and the applicability of both to the case before us, we must also recognize an exception. As the Supreme Court has explained, “[t]he high value that we have placed on the right to refuse to deal with other firms does not mean that the right is unqualified.”
Aspen Skiing Co. v. Aspen Highlands Skiing Corp.,
More recently, however, first in
Trinko
and then again in
Pacific Bell,
the Court has instructed us that
Aspen Skiing
lies “at or near the outer boundaries of § 2 liability,” and that
Aspen Skiing
controls only where the monopolist’s “unilateral termination of a voluntary
(and thus presumably profitable)
course of dealing suggests] a willingness to forsake short-term
*1225
profits to achieve an anticompetitive end.”
Trinko,
That key fact is not present here. As was true in
Trinko
and
Christy Sports,
in the case before us “[t]here is no allegation that [Mercy] was motivated by anything other than a desire to make more money for itself.”
Christy Sports,
C
Equally and independently problematic for Dr. Bevan is the question of antitrust injury.
See, e.g.,
Answer Br. at 40-49. To succeed in a claim for monopolization or its attempt, Dr. Bevan must show not only that he was harmed by Mercy’s conduct, but that the injury he suffered involved harm to competition.
See Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc.,
The antitrust violation Dr. Bevan alleges is Mercy’s refusal to grant him active medical staff privileges, and by way of remedy he asks us, in addition to dam
*1226
ages and other things, to order Mercy to grant him those privileges.
See
Second Am. Compl., J.A. at 60. In doing so, he does not ask us to prevent a monopoly or break one apart. Instead, what he seeks is the chance to
share
in Mercy’s putative monopoly. The difficulty is that “[w]hen the monopolist is forced to sell [to a competitor], it sets the monopoly price and overall competitiveness is not affected at all; we simply have two firms sharing the monopoly rather than one.” Areeda & Hovenkamp,
supra,
¶ 773, at 239. That is, even if we were to force Mercy to accommodate Dr. Bevan’s demand, the hospital could simply impose costs and conditions on Dr. Bevan’s activities that would prevent him from undercutting the hospital’s own nephrology practice. Dr. Bevan very well might be better off with such a shared monopoly, but there’s no guarantee consumers would be. Whatever injury he may have suffered, then, it is not one the antitrust laws protect because “a producer’s loss is no concern of the antitrust laws, which protect consumers from suppliers rather than suppliers from each other.”
Stamatakis Indus., Inc. v. King,
Dr. Bevan might reply that we could order Mercy not merely to share its facilities with him, but also dictate the terms of such an arrangement in a manner likely to help consumers. The difficulty with this tack is that the Supreme Court has recently and repeatedly reminded us that “[c]ourts are ill suited ‘to act as central planners, identifying the proper price, quantity, and other terms of dealing.’ ”
Pac. Bell Tel. Co.,
This isn’t to suggest that it’s always and metaphysically impossible to discern judicially administrable terms on which sharing might be mandated. One might argue, for example, that Ski Co.’s extensive past course of dealing with Highlands Corp., together with Ski Co.’s refusal to sell to a competitor at its own retail prices, provided a sufficient factual foundation on which a federal court could fashion a judicially manageable remedy.
See
Areeda
&
Hovenkamp,
supra,
¶ 772, at 223-24 (describing those facts as “very close to dispositive” in
Aspen
Skiing). But, be that as it may, no such comparable foundation is evident here. Dr. Bevan has never served on Mercy’s active staff, only on its consulting staff. The hospital’s bylaws have previously forbidden consulting staff members from continuing to offer services at the hospital when an active staff member arrives. And there is no record indication that Mercy has ever had competing active staff nephrology practices at the hospital (very much to the contrary). All of this suggests that, at least in this case, we would do well to abide the Supreme Court’s admonition that “[a]n antitrust court is unlikely to be an effective day-today enforcer of ... detailed sharing obligations.”
Trinko,
*1227 Dr. Bevan’s monopolization and attempted monopolization claims fail as a matter of law for at least two independent reasons: Mercy’s failure to share its facilities is evidence of competitive — not anticompetitive — conduct, and whatever injury Dr. Bevan may have suffered from his exclusion from the hospital’s staff, it is not one that the antitrust laws were designed to remedy. The district court’s judgment is therefore
Affirmed.
Notes
. The parties agree that federal antitrust law principles control both Dr. Bevan's federal and state antitrust claims. The Colorado Supreme Court, whose judgment naturally is final on matters of state law, has held that, Ugliven the substantial similarity in text and purpose present in the federal and state antitrust statutes, ... federal decisions construing the Sherman and Clayton Acts, although not necessarily controlling on our interpretation of the Colorado law, are nevertheless entitled to careful scrutiny in determining the scope of the state antitrust statute.”
People v. N. Ave. Furniture & Appliance, Inc.,
. It's not entirely clear that Dr. Bevan has even alleged the existence of two separate markets, as his purported “monopoly leveraging" claim requires. At times, Dr. Bevan has suggested that there are two product markets here — one for "inpatient nephrology physician services” and another for “outpatient nephrology physician services.” See Opening Br. at 12. At other times, he has intimated we have just one market before us — one for “nephrology physician services.” See Second Am. Compl., J.A. at 47. None of this confusion, however, affects our analysis, because our anticompetitive conduct and antitrust injury holdings do not rely for their validity on the presence of one market versus two. Though the parties avidly dispute the appropriate scope of the relevant geographic market — should it be limited to the "Durango area” or more properly encompass the "Four Corners area”? — deciding that question is likewise inessential to our analysis.
. As it happened, after the Supreme Court's decision, Highlands Corp. continued to lose money and eventually merged with Ski Co., though presumably for a higher price than it would have commanded before the Court's intervention, leading some commentators to argue that Aspen Skiing "amounted to no more than a sharing of the monopoly between the parties.” Glen O. Robinson, On Refusing to Deal with Rivals, 87 Cornell L.Rev. 1177, 1196 n. 74 (2002).
. Because we affirm the district court’s summary judgment for Mercy, we have no need to address Dr. Bevan’s separate arguments challenging the propriety of the district court’s *1227 intra-district transfer of the case from Denver to Durango in the event of a trial.