AAHomecare Joins Coalition to Repeal Competitive Bidding

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The American Association for Homecare
has joined other health care stakeholders in forming a coalition to
explore the repeal of competitive bidding.

The Coalition to Ensure Beneficiary Access will “reach out to a
wide array of patient and provider stakeholders to demonstrate
broad support for a repeal of competitive bidding,” the association
said. An initial meeting of the group included representatives from
the National Association for the Support of Long Term Care, the
Health Industry Distributors Association, several industry
providers and manufacturers, and the ITEM Coalition, whose members
include more than 70 health care advocacy organizations.

“AAHomecare has consistently questioned the merits of
competitive bidding and expressed concerns about its effects on
patient access to home care and its impact on small providers,”
said Tyler Wilson, association president. “We also question whether
competitive bidding will produce the savings for Medicare that have
been projected.”

Because DME competitive bidding was enacted into law as part of
the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, Congress must pass another
law to repeal it.

CMS is ramping up its bidding program now and is expected to
name 10 MSAs where bidding will begin later this year. The program
will expand to another 80 areas, including New York, Los Angeles
and Chicago, in 2009.

The coalition effort will focus on five principles:

1) Accreditation and quality standards are critically important
and a positive step forward. The Medicare program has taken the
necessary steps to combat fraud and abuse and to ensure that
beneficiaries have access to high-quality DMEPOS items.

2) Beneficiaries lose under competitive bidding. The
administrative process of bidding within select regions for select
products will result in reduced availability of products to
individuals in certain areas of the country. If fully implemented,
beneficiaries would be the ultimate losers.

3) Competitive bidding will create a bureaucracy. In order to
implement competitive bidding, CMS will also construct a
bureaucracy, and the full costs are not taken into consideration.
These expenses may negate any potential savings of competitive
bidding.

4) Small businesses will be harmed. Small businesses will be
unable to be as price-competitive as larger companies. CMS also
stated that as few as two suppliers could be selected for a product
category in a competitive bid area, which would result in further
erosion of the small business community.

5) There is a better approach to competitive bidding. The
coalition will pursue an approach that secures savings, foregoes a
new federal bureaucracy and protects beneficiaries and small
businesses.

For questions about the new coalition, contact Walt Gorski,
AAHomecare’s vice president of government affairs, at [email protected].