Federal antitrust lawsuit targets OhioHealth, plus are Cameron Mitchell's restaurants actually declining or if they're just unlucky.

Good morning, Columbus.

It's 23° right now and light snow all night. You'll have bitter cold on the walk to your car, but climbing to 30° under overcast skies. Watch out for ice and cars on 270 going 20 or 120. Bundle up this morning, but you can ditch the heavy layers by lunch.

📍 DOJ sues OhioHealth over alleged anticompetitive practices

If the feds are right, you might actually see savings on your health insurance bills.

The Department of Justice is suing OhioHealth, alleging OhioHealth blocks competition and inflates prices across central Ohio because it can. The feds claim OhioHealth uses its contract terms to prevent insurers from offering plans that reward patients for choosing cheaper competitor hospitals.

The DOJ says OhioHealth controls roughly a third of inpatient hospital beds in Franklin County. Not quite a monopoly, but enough market power to dictate terms to insurers.

Here's the mechanism: normally, insurers could offer cheaper plans if you use budget hospitals for non-emergency care. That's how tiered networks work. But the DOJ alleges OhioHealth's contracts block this.

If insurers want OhioHealth in their network, and they need it, given that one-third market share, they can't steer patients away from OhioHealth facilities, even when competitors charge less. That's the core of the lawsuit: OhioHealth allegedly uses must-have status to kill price competition.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost joined the suit, citing violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Yost jumping in makes sense: healthcare costs are political gold in Ohio, and nobody wants to look soft on hospital monopolies. OhioHealth says it hasn't been served yet and won't comment on pending litigation.

If the DOJ wins, it could force OhioHealth to renegotiate contracts that allow tiered pricing. If OhioHealth wins, the status quo holds.

This takes years. Don't expect relief on your next bill.

📍 Are Cameron Mitchell's restaurants actually declining?

If one of Columbus's most celebrated restaurant groups is cutting corners, that matters. These places built the city's dining reputation.

A Redditor is asking what locals have been whispering about: are Cameron Mitchell Restaurants sliding, or are they just having bad luck? The original poster describes smaller portions, service hiccups, and quality dips at multiple CMR locations over the past six months. The thread backs them up with dozens of comments reporting similar experiences at Ocean Club, Cap City, and The Pearl.

Mitchell opened his first restaurant, Cameron's American Bistro, in 1993. The empire grew from there, and for a long time, CMR was the standard-bearer for upscale dining in Columbus. If you wanted to impress someone, you took them to a Cameron Mitchell restaurant.

If there's a real quality drop, it's either money trouble or a calculated bet that diners won't notice. The restaurant industry has been squeezed hard in recent years: labor costs up, food costs up, margins shrinking.

Some restaurants raise prices and eat the margin hit. Others cut portions and hope nobody notices.

So is this real decline across the brand, or just a few bad nights?

These restaurants defined upscale dining here. If they're sliding, it won't take long for everyone to notice.

⚡ Quick Hits

• Ohio ranks in the top 10 worst states for boss satisfaction: Ohio bosses rank near the bottom nationally in employee ratings, per Glassdoor data. So maybe it's not just you.

• Takumi Sushi just opened on Sawmill Road: an upscale all-you-can-eat sushi and hibachi spot in northwest Columbus that moved into the old Sunflower Chinese Restaurant space near Hard Road. The longtime Chinese spot closed in January after nearly 40 years.

Scoreboard

Your teams, their results, no fluff.

Ohio State Men's Basketball L, 60-66. Fell to Michigan State on the road. Tough loss in East Lansing.

Ohio State Women's Basketball W, 88-83. Beat USC at home in a tight finish. Five-point margin doesn't tell the whole story. This one went down to the wire.

📜 On This Day

The woman born in Cleveland became the literal voice of the 23rd century.

In 1932, actress Majel Barrett was born in Cleveland. She'd go on to become the voice of the computer in every single Star Trek series: The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and even the 2009 reboot film.

She also played Nurse Chapel and Lwaxana Troi, but it's the computer voice that stuck. That calm, authoritative "Working" became the sound of the future for millions of fans.

Barrett married Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry in 1969 and remained part of the franchise until her death in 2008. A Cleveland native who voiced humanity's vision of tomorrow.

Stay warm today. That wind chill bites harder than the thermometer suggests.

See you Tuesday.

Before coffee. Before the chaos.