A state law that could have jeopardized the existence of Ballad Health 0 has now died in a subcommittee hearing in the Tennessee House. Democrat Gloria Johnson, of Knoxville, had proposed the bill to defund the state department of health and the attorney general’s mandatory oversight of the hospital system. That active supervision was created in order to monitor Ballad’s “inpatient monopoly” that was created by the 2018 merger of Wellmont Health System and Mountain States Health Alliance. The subcomittee determined that removing the funding would have risked the state being the focus of a federal antitrust lawsuit.