Small business owners speak out against competitive bidding

WATERLOO, Iowa, June 6, 2013—At a Regulatory Fairness Hearing hosted by the U.S. Small Business Administration on June 6, healthcare advocates and medical equipment suppliers testified about the potentially costly effects of Medicare’s competitive bidding program.  They emphasized the damaging consequences this arbitrary new bidding program for Medicare contracts will inevitably have on Medicare beneficiaries and on the economy.

Those who testified expressed concerns that the competitive bidding program’s lack of accountability encourages a race to the bottom on local service and quality of equipment for Medicare beneficiaries striving to remain in their homes rather than an institutional care setting. They argued that nearly half of small medical providers will likely go out of business, leaving their employees jobless and their patients without their trusted caretakers and suppliers. Even worse, they said, those firms that are awarded contracts will be forced to accept unsustainably low rates that leave them with no choice but to cut staff and services. It will be Medicare beneficiaries who suffer the most, facing delays in services, higher health risks from waiting for supplies and increased hospital visits from a lack of at-home caretakers.

Ryan Ball, director of state policy with VGM & Associates, said, “We have been working with the SBA for several months and they have been very receptive to our concerns on competitive bidding. These hearings are a great opportunity for independent providers to voice our frustrations and concerns to a Federal agency, and to educate the public that they will likely lose their small, local provider in favor of a national company that is hundreds of miles away.”

The upcoming expansion of the competitive bidding program will have serious consequences for medical suppliers nationwide. Businesses in the small number of test markets where competitive bidding is already in place have experienced devastating cuts, and should the program expand to 91 additional markets, as it’s scheduled to do in July of this year, up to 100,000 people will likely lose their jobs. The impact will be felt most heavily by small businesses, and those who took part in today’s hearing were hopeful that their testimony would bring attention to this flawed system and the urgent need to delay its expansion and, ultimately, replace it with a system that would set fair prices and allow them to continue providing their patients with quality care.  Go online to www.vgm.com.