Government Sells Out Seniors

Millions of seniors are bound to be caught off-guard when they try to obtain home medical equipment in the future. Congress and the current president seem to be fairly resolute on sticking with current cuts to the Medicare program. Already set in motion is the plan to eliminate payments for oxygen equipment after 36 months of rental. The oxygen equipment then becomes the property of the Medicare patient. Medicare beneficiaries are saddled with a piece of equipment that they cannot fix or service and only has a limited use. This is outside of the Medicare Competitive Bid program. This cut has already been signed into effect.

The Medicare Competitive Bidding Program takes bids from vendors interested in accepting Medicare's proposed pricing after each business bids against the other. Round One of competitive bidding is over. Medicare originally speculated that around 6500 companies would participate. The actual number ending up being close to 1500. In an error plagued system, hundreds of bidders were disallowed. The actual number of companies that won contracts was 325. What kind of service component do you think this allows for?

The original premise for the plan may be sound. The original plan was for Medicare to compile similar savings to the VA Competitive Bid Process. The VA medical equipment program is currently set up on a competitive bid. There is no doubt that there is a significant cost savings in the plan to operate under this system. I hope that you don't have to be exposed to care provided to one of our veterans. This program is a disgrace in terms of quality care being provided to the people that have given meritorious service to our country. That is where our Medicare program is headed. The new Administrator of Medicare, Kerry Weems, seems to be ecstatic over the cost savings that will be available.

Our congress seems fixated on the dollar amount that Medicare is spending in home medical arena. What can we tell from the money being spent on medical equipment? We can ascertain the amount of money we are spending. That is all we can determine.The reason that money continues to flow into home health care is simple. We have determined through various studies that it is far less expensive to deliver health care at home than it is to deliver care at the hospital level. I think it is fundamental that home medical costs continue to rise. As the baby boomers continue to age, home health care spending should continue to increase. Hopefully, this translates into overall health care savings.

As congress and the president keep trying to chip away at the home medical equipment industry several effects will occur. I think we can look for service to deteriorate, inferior products to be substituted for quality products and Medicare patients will suffer. As the quality of home health care deteriorates we can look for hospitalizations to increase. The end effect of all these "cost savings" will be to drive up the overall cost of health care.

What needs to happen? We need to heed the calls from 20 years ago to do something with the money set aside for Medicare expenses. We need to quit trying to make cuts to a businesses that are already very "lean". In responding to Medicare cuts over the last several years, businesses have gotten very good at accomplishing their goals with the minimum number of people required. We cannot afford to do anything less. Our seniors deserve a top-notch health care system. They do not deserve the system congress has in mind.