'We all must work together to encourage our Representatives to take a stand'...

By Jay Broadbent, owner of Alpine Home Medical

I entered the homecare community 16 years ago because I was drawn to what the business stood for: helping people. And I intend to remain in the homecare business as long as I can because I know the positive impact quality medical equipment and services for the home can have on one’s life. Honestly, there are very few things in my life that are more rewarding than taking a power wheelchair into a person’s home and watching the joy as he or she begins to access mobility they had not before.

However, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) program is hindering Medicare patients’ access to impactful homecare products. Medicare’s competitive bidding program, launched on January 1 in nine metro areas around the country, is working against the best interests of patients by limiting people’s ability to get lifesaving products like oxygen tanks, sleep apnea devices, noninvasive ventilators, wheelchairs, diabetic supplies, walkers, and hospital beds.

I know that the title “competitive bidding” might lead you to believe that the program fosters competition, but in reality “competitive bidding” does the exact opposite. The program siphons off providers by selectively limiting their entry to the market through a bidding process that selects one company to become the sole provider of a particular product. This wouldn’t be so bad if these “winning” providers were chosen because of their experience and/or staff size. However, a winner is picked based exclusively on price – which is often low balled –and all other more qualified providers are shut out of the Medicare market for that particular product.

This supposed cost-cutting tool sacrifices patient access to lifesaving products that are already cost-effective. At the end of the day, this program will actually increase overall healthcare costs as seniors and those living with disabilities are forced into expensive hospital stays that were once unneeded. For instance, say an oxygen patient’s tank is not working properly, and she calls her provider to come fix it. In the current market, an oxygen tank and its needed maintenance costs $160 a month and almost all suppliers are able to visit her home within a couple hours (if not sooner) to fix the problem at no additional cost to the monthly fee. If competitive bidding comes to Utah, this same patient will call her provider who is bound to be short staffed and thus cannot come out to check the tank for hours or maybe even days. If the tank stops working, she will be forced into the hospital. This visit will cost $1,600 if she has to stay overnight. That is ten times the amount it costs to fix a problem that is currently handled at home for free – and ten times the amount taxpayers are accustomed to paying for oxygen-related Medicare problems.

Worse – what if this call happens during a storm or power outage? Currently, my staff and other HME providers are available to dispense assistance immediately to Medicare beneficiaries whose products rely on power surges. But if only one provider is allowed to deliver a product, and all others have been forced out of the market, can one business reach all the patients in need of a specific product? These questions nag at me because in the nine metropolitans where competitive bidding is operating, patients are already reporting difficulty finding these products from local equipment providers, long delays in obtaining medically required equipment, a reduced quality of the equipment they receive, and longer than necessary hospital stays due to trouble discharging patients to home-based care – and this is without a crisis in play that could be caused by a power shortage or natural disaster.

Ultimately, this program will hurt Utah’s financial health. It is estimated that if competitive bidding comes to the state, 50 percent of providers will have to close their doors. Many homecare companies are small, locally-owned businesses – establishments that are the heart of America’s economy.

But there is a solution to competitive bidding – H.R. 1041, also known as the Fairness in Medicare Bidding Act. This bipartisan bill in the House repeals Medicare’s competitive bidding for HME. Right now, two Congressmen, Reps. Matheson and Bishop, support this piece of legislation, but we need more support if we are bring this bill to the floor to a vote.

We cannot let competitive bidding come to Utah. We all must work together to encourage our Representatives to take a stand against competitive bidding for HME. If they don’t, the health and well-being of America’s most vulnerable population is in jeopardy.