Draft Letters to Legislators

DME Provider - We Oppose Competitive Bidding

As an (owner/employee) of a durable medical equipment (DME) supplier in (state)/(your district), I want to share with you my deep concerns about a so-called competitive bidding proposal for DME being considered as part of one version of the Medicare prescription drug bill Congress will soon finalize.

In addition to threatening quality and access to essential medical equipment for Medicare home health patients, this plan threatens thousands of jobs in (state), (many right here in the __th district). Medicare is the dominant purchaser of DME and related services or seniors and the disabled, providing suppliers with the majority of their total business. Since competitive bidding would force Medicare to award contracts for DME products and services to the lowest bidder, the remaining companies – typically businesses with less than $3 million in annual revenue – would not survive without the ability to serve Medicare beneficiaries. Competitive bidding would eliminate providers from their local communities, severing longstanding patient-provider relationships and forcing patients to switch to a different provider that may be many miles away.

Last year, Small Business Committee Chairman Manzullo recognized the serious threat competitive bidding poses and wrote to Ways and Means Chairman Thomas warning that competitive bidding for home health DME “does not bode well for the ability of small business to continue to participate in the Medicare program.”

I hope you agree that there is too much at stake to gamble on an unproven bidding proposal that will undoubtedly eliminate thousands of small business jobs in our state and harm the elderly and disabled home health patients we serve.

Please urge Medicare conferees and the leadership that a far more preferable alternative to the DME bidding proposal is the proposed seven-year freeze on inflation adjustments contained within the Senate’s Medicare bill. This approach would minimize harm to home health patients, produce immediate savings for the Medicare program and not require the creation of a new federal bureaucracy My (employees/family) and I are counting on your support. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,