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.