A new study finds that CMS’s competitive bidding program for durable medical equipment will lead to reduced competition, lower quality of care, and higher costs.
The study, conducted by Robert Morris University professors Brian O’Roark, Ph.D. and Stephen Foreman, Ph.D., for the Pennsylvania Association of Medical Suppliers, highlights various economic consequences of CMS’s program, and is available from the PAMS website.
“The limits on competition that CMS is proposing to implement will have great potential to produce higher prices and lower service quality,” Foreman says. “The franchise bidding process that CMS is implementing is at odds with everything that we know about markets, efficiency and incentives.
“We should be encouraging added competition in the market, not limiting it,” he continues. “Limits on competition like those proposed by CMS rarely, if ever, make consumers better off.”
“We hope that Congress and CMS will heed the warnings of the study’s authors about the high potential for negative and unintended consequences from competitive bidding and put this anti-competitive scheme on hold – at least until these impacts can be fully analyzed,” said John Shirvinsky, PAMS executive director.
