WASHINGTON — U.S. Reps. Glenn 'GT' Thompson, a Republican, and Jason Altmire, a Democrat, began a bipartisan push for newly introduced H.R. 1041 yesterday.
At a press conference held in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, the Pennsylvania congressmen told reporters the budget-neutral bill would immediately repeal Medicare's competitive bidding program for DMEPOS.
The Fairness in Medicare Bidding Act (dubbed FIMBA), would use $20 billion in unobligated discretionary appropriations to offset the government's estimate of savings from the bid program, "not adding one dime to the deficit," Thompson and Altmire said in a letter to colleagues about the bill.
Under the legislation, the Office of Management and Budget would decide where the unobligated agency funds would come from, although the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs would be exempt.
Both Thompson and Altmire have fought against the CMS bidding program, which Congress delayed after only two weeks in 2008 due to complaints from beneficiaries and providers. Since then, the representatives said, there have been no significant improvements to the program, which began again in nine cities on Jan. 1.
Last year, both representatives were cosponsors of H.R. 3790, similar repeal legislation that garnered support from 259 House members.
"Medicare beneficiaries are entitled to high-quality, low-cost medical equipment and we intend to deliver on this promise by reforming the current bidding program," Thompson said. "We must allow for a marketplace where seniors have quality and choice, smaller providers are competing to deliver these supplies, and I ask my colleagues to join in cosponsoring H.R. 1041."
Under the current program, the representatives said small HME providers would continue to be forced out of the marketplace.
"CMS' competitive bidding program limits seniors' ability to buy highly specialized medical equipment from the local suppliers they know and trust," Altmire said. "We have introduced legislation to repeal this misguided program at no new cost to taxpayers."
Within days of introducing H.R. 1041 March 11, the representatives told reporters, a number of patient advocacy groups have announced their support, among them the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation and the National Association for the Support of Long Term Care.
In a statement following the press conference, American Association for Homecare President Tyler Wilson said Thompson and Altmire "recognize that the Medicare bidding program is a severely flawed approach to providing care to seniors and people with disabilities. Home-based care is already the most cost-effective setting for post-acute care, and this bidding system is merely a badly designed solution in search of a problem."
Read Thompson and Altmire's "Dear Colleague" letter about H.R. 1041.
Read the bill text for H.R. 1041.
View more competitive bidding stories.