Washington Post Reporter Comments on Competitive Bidding

On C-SPAN’s June 5 “Washington Journal,” HME provider David Heaton
called in to ask Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly her
view of competitive bidding. “With respect to competitive bidding
and using more of that in the Medicare program, yes, I do expect
that there will be more of an effort to have competitive bidding,”
Connolly responded. The Post health care reporter told
C-SPAN’s audience that competitive bidding is “all about the free
enterprise system” and “letting the marketplace really flourish.
The idea is that Medicare ought to be able to get the best price
available. They ought to be able to do some good shopping for their
customers,” she said.

According to Heaton, who owns First Class Medical
Equipment and Supply in Houston, “This should be a wake up call
to durable medical equipment companies and lobbying organizations
that wish to have competitive bidding repealed. The efforts
currently being made by the durable medical equipment industry to
go it alone have me believe that their comments will fall on deaf
ears based upon Congress’ view that competitive bidding is the
beginning of the process in the evolving health care reform plan
for Medicare, or any other national health plan for that matter.”
In a press release after the program aired, Heaton said related
entities such as hospitals, home health, skilled nursing and
physician representatives need to “unify in their opposition to
competitive bidding as a whole.”

View the segment on the C-SPAN site. (It’s 12 minutes
and 33 seconds in.)