ARLINGTON, Va.--In a special update sent to members on Friday, American Association for Homecare Chairman Alan Landauer and President Tyler Wilson explained provisions of H.R. 6252, legislation introduced last week to delay competitive bidding--and the industry's work in bringing it about.
According to the message:
The legislation has been under development for some time. However, AAHomecare only received the final details of the proposal late in the day on June 11. The leadership of the Committee on Ways and Means, who were instrumental in putting the legislation together, wanted AAHomecare’s reaction to the proposed bill in less than 24 hours.
Over a month ago, anticipating that the final legislative proposal would come together quickly, AAHomecare’s executive committee began conferring with several other key industry stakeholders. These other groups included The MED Group and VGM. This task force has focused on the end-game strategy for successfully delaying competitive bidding. While the industry’s government relations and grassroots campaign to beat back the implementation of bidding has been underway for several years, many critical issues have crystallized in just the past 30 days after the high-profile hearing before the Ways and Means Committee on May 6.
With the pace of events in the House and Senate moving very fast, the opportunity for this industry to have the competitive bidding program examined and addressed by Congress before July 1 has been quickly drawing to a close. At the same time, the membership of AAHomecare has consistently been very clear that it wanted competitive bidding delayed, the implementation problems examined, and the entire program reassessed.
It is under the foregoing circumstances that the AAHomecare executive committee and other participants in the task force reviewed the final Ways and Means proposal on June 11. After careful consideration, AAHomecare announced its support of the impending legislation. In announcing our support, we made it conditional upon no other cuts being leveled on the industry this year.
In sum, H.R. 6252 does not include everything the industry requested during its many discussions with Ways and Means about how best to delay the start of round one. The payment reduction in the bill targets only the competitive bidding product categories and is not across-the-board as we urged from the outset. Round one will be delayed 18-24 months and then re-bid, and round two contracts will not take effect until 2011. The legislation lists numerous improvements including the exclusion of complex rehab from any future bidding program.
The cost of the delay is a 9.5 precent payment reduction in 2009 for those items subject to competitive bidding in round one and no CPI update in 2009 for those items. All other items will receive a CPI update in 2009. In 2010 through 2013 all items will receive a CPI update. In 2014, the items subject to a reduction in 2009 will receive a 2 percent update over the CPI--except in areas where competitive bidding contracts are in place.
The industry has made tremendous strides in putting our concerns about competitive bidding before Congress, and the moment for action is upon us. While few legislative initiatives are perfect and this current proposal is no different, AAHomecare believes that H.R. 6252 is the best option for a majority of the HME community at this time. Put differently, if the industry were to indicate ambivalence or disapproval of the House legislation, there is considerable downside risk that we might see both product-specific cuts (e.g. in oxygen) and competitive bidding moving forward without pause and unchanged. The prospect of either or both would be very problematic for many providers across the country.
Rarely in the recent history of the HME industry have so many different organizations, individual companies and other stakeholders come together to challenge such a fundamental and monumental threat to our livelihood and to the Medicare beneficiaries we serve. We have received the attention of Congress and we have shown that we can work through an issue and present a consensus position on Capitol Hill.
AAHomecare hopes all of its member companies will work quickly and vocally to support the House legislation. You should urge your representatives in Congress to sign on to H.R. 6252 and to support final passage of the Medicare DMEPOS Competitive Acquisition Reform Act of 2008.