Home Health & Hospice Week

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 statement. "The current round of competitive bidding will save beneficiaries significant amounts of money in cost-sharing and premiums." "The improvements made by Congress and [the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] offer important guarantees that winning suppliers will be able to the deliver items and services beneficiaries need," Waxman continued. "I am cautiously optimistic that competitive bidding for DME may soon begin to finally achieve its promise of reducing Medicare spending while maintaining or improving the quality of care received by beneficiaries."

Resource: Links to testimony offered by CMS, the HHS Office of Inspector General, Government Accountability Office, supplier representatives, and more are at http://energycommerce.house.gov -- choose "Subcommittee on Health" from the "Hearings" drop-down menu, then scroll down to click on the Sept. 15 hearing, "Medicare's Competitive Bidding Program for Durable Medical Equipment: Implications for Quality, Cost and Access."