After building a successful provider business 27 years ago that is now “on life support” thanks to competitive bidding, American Association for Homecare President Tom Ryan told attendees of Medtrade Spring’s Washington Update that he has been personally impacted by competitive bidding, but called on them to support industry efforts to stop CMS’s bid program.
“When you talk about ‘battle fatigue,’ we’re all fatigued,” he said. “But the people who are going to win this battle are the ones who get up every single day, get in the ring and fight.”
And while some providers might have thought the program would not necessarily impact them, because of CMS’s recently announced intent to expand competitive bidding rates nationwide by 2016, they were “now in the soup,” Ryan noted. He added that a nationwide expansion of competitive bidding actually poses bigger problems for smaller, rural providers, as well.
“The problem is, when competitive bidding came for most of us, we anticipated increased market share,” he explained. “But if you’re in a rural area, you’re not get any more market share; you’re just going to get egregious prices.”
Ryan joked that he was literally on his third set of shoes from walking around Washington, D.C., but explained that stopping the bid program would require “tireless” work by the associations and providers alike. To that end, he said the two best opportunities the industry has for reversing competitive biding were H.R. 1717, the bill that would replace bidding with the Market Pricing Program, and attaching the bill’s provisions as an amendment to sustainable growth rate (aka the “doc fix”) legislation.
To that end, the association is working with House and Senate committees to include MPP elements in current SGR legislation., according to Jay Witter, vice president of Government Affairs for AAHomecare. Witter, who referred to the 2016 expansion as “a disaster,” noted that already the association enjoyed a rare in the Senate by attaching an amendment to require out of state providers to prove they are licensed at the time of bid submission.
“For the first time, we got a provision in a Senate Finance Committee markup,” he said. “The issue is small … But it is the first time the committee has ever officially voiced concern with competitive bidding. It’s a huge step forward…We have a place marker in there, so we are fighting to expand that.”
In addition to the SGR, the industry also had to keep driving support for H.R. 1717, which is currently at 171 co-sponsors. Witter says the bill needs more and says providers should begin involving in their patients in the fight to drive the point home with lawmakers.
“Now patients are being affected, and we want their voices heard on Capitol Hill,” he said. “We need a campaign where patients say, ‘I need my HME.’”