MESA’s Moran to Testify at MCAC Meeting

ORLANDO, Fla. — Liz Moran, executive director of the
five-state Medical Equipment Suppliers Association (Arkansas,
Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas), will testify today
before the Texas Medical Care Advisory Committee in the fight to
avert competitive bidding for incontinence supplies in Texas.

The proposed bidding program is being pushed by the Texas
Controller of Public Accounts, which believes it would curtail
fraud in the incontinence supplies sector. TCPA has said that more
DMEPOS providers dealing in incontinence supplies have been
convicted of fraud in the last two years in Texas than any other
provider group. Medicaid payments of more than $15 million have
been made “for alleged services involving incontinence supplies.
Most of these services were found to have not been provided,” the
TCPA said.

“MESA is and has always been opposed to competitive bidding in
any form,” Moran said in a release. “Though the TCPA is using fraud
to justify this initiative, their own numbers don’t support their
argument.”

Moran, who added that the association is also “vehemently
opposed to fraud,” said the TCPA has left unanswered many
questions, such as what “services” were involved, how many claims
were deliberately fraudulent and how many were the result of
billing errors.

“We’ve done our homework on this issue, and we’re aware that
this is more about an out-of-state provider looking for a
single-source contract than it is about the state wanting to deal
with fraud,” Moran said.

In recent years, similar purchasing proposals have emerged in a
number of states including Ohio, North Carolina, Florida and
Indiana.