The Texas Alliance for Home Care Services and the American Association for Homecare praised a bipartisan bill in Congress, H.R. 3790, to eliminate the deeply flawed "competitive" bidding program for durable medical equipment and services in Medicare. The bidding process for this controversial bidding program began October 21 in Dallas-Fort Worth and eight other metropolitan areas across the U.S.
Durable, or home medical equipment, such as oxygen, wheelchairs, diabetic supplies, and hospital beds, enables seniors and people with disabilities to receive quality care at home. Home-based care represents a cost-effective alternative to institutional care, and seniors prefer to receive care at home rather than in an institution.
To ensure that seniors and taxpayers receive the savings projected for the bid program, the bill would reduce Medicare reimbursements to home medical equipment providers in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, and 2015. At the same time, the bill will allow thousands of home medical providers to keep their doors open to serve the millions of Americans who require home-based care and will allow patients to continue to receive services from the providers of their choice.
H.R. 3790 has strong bipartisan support from 30 cosponsors in the House of Representatives including Texas Democrat Eddie Bernice Johnson and Republican Ralph Hall. The introduction of the legislation comes just days before the start-up of the bidding process for the bid program for home medical equipment. The Medicare bidding process will began on October 21 in nine metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) across the U.S. including Dallas-Fort Worth. The bid prices and bid winners would be selected in 2010 and new prices would become effective January 1, 2011. Another round of bidding would begin after that in 100 MSAs across the U.S.
"Texas home medical equipment suppliers are pleased with the introduction of H.R. 3790 to repeal the flawed competitive bidding program, which achieves the same cost savings as set forth in the demonstration projects in Polk County Florida and San Antonio, Texas. This budget-neutral legislation will maintain beneficiaries' access care, save Medicare funds, and give back $25 million annually to the American tax payer that otherwise would be spent administering competitive bidding," said Barry Johnson, President of the Texas Alliance for Home Care Services.
Categories subject to the bid program include medical oxygen, which is a highly regulated prescription drug, complex rehabilitative power wheelchairs, enteral nutrients (used in tube feeding), and hospital beds, among other categories.
The initial roll-out of the bidding program in 2008 produced disastrous results for home medical equipment patients and for providers (mostly small businesses) who were excluded from Medicare as a result of the first round of bidding.
During the 2008 implementation, serious problems were encountered, such as: