Competitive Bidding:
Bidding Hearing Gives Suppliers Little Hope Of Delay
Published on Tue Aug 24, 2010
Jan. 1 implementation date for DME competitive bidding looms. Durable medical equipment suppliers hoping to sway lawmakers to delay or terminate Medicare's competitive bidding program were disappointed at a recent congressional hearing. At the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's health subcommittee hearing on bidding Sept. 15, numerous government officials testified about the DME benefit and the new round of bidding. Two supplier representatives, RN Karen Lerner, a wound care, support surface and rehab specialist with Allcare Medical in New Jersey, and Nancy Schlichting, President and CEO of Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, also testified about the program's predicted harmful effects. But Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) may have summed up lawmakers' attitude toward bidding with his opening comments. "I question those who say that we need to repeal the program now because of speculative threats to beneficiary access in the future," he said in a prepared [...]