Representatives want end to Medicare bids
ST. PETERSBURG (AP) – Five Florida members of Congress are pushing a bill that would kill Medicare’s new program requiring competitive bidding for suppliers of medical equipment in nine metro areas across the country, including South Florida and greater Orlando.
Officials project savings of 26 percent – potentially billions of dollars – on home medical supplies such as power wheelchairs and beds under the new program. The affected Florida counties include three in South Florida – Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach – and four in central Florida: Orange, Seminole, Lake and Osceola.
But House members from Florida and other affected zones are trying to kill the program, the Web site Health News Florida reported Wednesday. The strategy, outlined in industry publications, is to get their language into the health care overhaul legislation now being negotiated in Congress.
Sponsor of the bill, HR 3790, is Democrat Kendrick Meek of Miami, who is running for the U.S. Senate next year. As of Tuesday, four other House members were among the 18 co-sponsors: Reps. Alcee Hastings, Ron Klein, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Robert Wexler, all Democrats from South Florida. They say they’re out to protect patients, not the equipment suppliers.
“The goal is not necessarily to spare the industry as much as it is to protect Florida’s 3.1 million Medicare recipients,” wrote Meek’s spokesman Adam Sharon in an e-mail reply to questions from Health News Florida. The bidding system, he said, would lead to “disruption in serviceand affect a population of Floridians for whom some of these products are life-giving.”
He listed problems that had been seen when the program was tried before, such as out-of-state companies winning bids for areas in which they had no local service personnel. But Medicare spokesman Peter Ashkenaz said those and other concerns have been addressed this time.
Meek and others’ attempt to squelch competitive bidding comes at a time when leaders of his own party in Congress and the White House are trying to find savings in Medicare that can help pay for expansion of coverage to the uninsured. Not even Medicare advocates agree with Meek.
“We’re definitely overspending for a lot of these products,” said Paul Precht, policy and communications director for Medicare Rights Center. “Competitive bidding is a reasonable way of getting the price right.”