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The CRE Calls Out AARP
WASHINGTON — In written comments submitted to the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, AARP, long considered a champion of senior adults, embraced Medicare's DMEPOS competitive bidding program as a fraud-and-abuse deterrent that would save seniors money.
"AARP believes that competitive bidding should be used for pricing durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics and supplies, as long as quality and access are not compromised by the competitive bidding process," the organization said in its comments to the subcommittee, which held a hearing on the bid program last week.
"If the competitive bidding program achieves the goal of setting more appropriate payment amounts for DMEPOS items, it will result in reduced beneficiary out-of-pocket expenses as well as savings to taxpayers and to the Medicare program."
That prompted a response from the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness, a Washington-based regulatory watchdog group assisting in a lawsuit that seeks to stay the bid program. In those comments, the CRE said in a post on its website, "AARP demonstrated its disregard of the views of America's Medicare beneficiaries. AARP embraced competitive bidding even though seniors and their families are angry, frightened and deeply opposed to the program, which will terminate many Medicare beneficiaries' access to the home medical equipment supplier of their choice."
The organization called on AARP "to listen to voices of Medicare beneficiaries and retract their support of competitive bidding."
Some of those actual beneficiary voices via the CRE's hotline can be heard at www.thecre.com/Forum.
In the CRE's own written comments to the House subcommittee, the group's Jim Tozzi said, "We have received hundreds of calls on our toll-free hotline from people concerned about what the Medicare competitive bidding program would mean for health and their peace of mind. Many of the callers expressed concern and fear that the competitive bidding program would mean that they would lose access to the DME care providers they know and trust."
But Nora Super, AARP's director of federal government relations for health, said seniors are paying for a lack of competition.
