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Obama administration claims $42.8 billion in savings from health law bidding program
The healthcare reform law's competitive bidding program for durable medical equipment such as hospital beds and wheelchairs is projected to save $42.8 billion over the next 10 years, the Medicare agency said in a report Wednesday.
Competitive bidding, an effort to replace Medicare's standard fees with market competition among providers, was created by the 2003 Medicare reform law and began on Jan. 1, 2011 in nine pilot metropolitan areas. The 2010 healthcare reform law expands the program nationwide starting in 2013, despite industry warnings that payment cuts required under the program were too deep for many small companies to survive.
The new report, however, found "no negative effects on the health of people on Medicare or their access to needed supplies and services," according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and "very few complaints about the program."
"Since the program was implemented in 2011," the group said in a statement, it has received "reports from hundreds of Medicare patients about difficulty finding local equipment and service providers, delays in obtaining medically required DME, and fewer choices when selecting equipment and providers."
The group points out that 30 consumer and disability groups and 171 members of Congress have called for replacing the program with a different market-based pricing system.
