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a wake up call to durable medical equipment companies and lobbying organizations that wish to have competitive bidding repealed.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.)