DeParle: Work with Congress on Bid Program

WASHINGTON — According to Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of
the White House Office of Health Reform, Congress has “been
convinced before that a more competitive marketplace for durable
medical equipment is the right way to move forward, and I think
there is a way to do that and to meet them halfway.”

At an 8 am breakfast meeting with reporters on Wednesday,
DeParle responded to a question on two of MedPAC’s recommendations
for Medicare savings — competitive bidding for DME and new
calculations for medical imaging payments — and the fact that
Congress has been fighting back on both.

“I don’t have all the details about those two items. I don’t run
the Medicare program anymore,” said DeParle, former head of the
Health Care Financing Administration (CMS’ predecessor) during the
Clinton administration.

However, she noted, “Competitive bidding isn’t just something
that MedPAC recommended, but it was enacted into law 12 years ago
by Congress.”

In fact, said DeParle, referring to competitive bidding
demonstration projects in Florida and Texas during her term at
HCFA, “I did those demos in durable medical equipment, and my
observation is that those demos were successful. But they were
quite different than what I think was going on last year with
competitive pricing for medical equipment, and that may be why
Congress decided it didn’t like what it saw. So obviously the
answer here is to work with Congress, and that’s what we’ll
do.”

Congress delayed competitive bidding after a two-week run last
July, but an interim final rule issued by CMS in January re-started
the program effective April 18 (see IFR Clears Way for
Round One Do-Over).

As a key adviser to President Obama, DeParle has a major role in
shaping the administration’s positions on health care reform and
working to develop reform legislation on Capitol Hill.

“I’m here to tell you that we’re making lots of progress in
realizing the president’s goal of getting health care reform
enacted this year,” she said at the reporters-only briefing, hosted
by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Families USA and the National
Federation of Independent Business.

Since taking on her new role a month ago, DeParle said, she has
“met one-on-one with about 40 members of Congress” discussing
various health reform issues. Both the House and Senate are on
track to have reform bills completed this summer, she said.