Home Health & Hospice Week

Medical equipment payments are 'excessive,' 'inflated,' bidding overview document says. Suppliers' battle against competitive bidding is meeting more resistance from the feds. Check out the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' latest piece of propaganda for the competitive bidding program at www.cms.hhs.gov/MLNMattersArticles/downloads/SE1007.pdf. "Numerous studies by the Office of the Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office have found that the prices paid by Medicare for certain DMEPOS items are excessive --sometimes three or four times retail prices and the amounts paid by commercial insurers," CMS says in the MLN Matters article. "Clearly, Medicare needs a better way to pay for DMEPOS items." The pitch: "Competitive bidding for DMEPOS is proven to save money for taxpayers and Medicare beneficiaries while maintaining access to quality DMEPOS items and services," CMS claims. CMS is distributing a bidding "program preview" based on the MLN Matters articles to program partners. The document is at [...]