Bid News Blog

From: CMS/CBIC

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) strongly urges all bidders to read the financial document requirements in the Round 1 Recompete Request for Bids (RFB) instructions and carefully check your documents to make sure they exactly meet all requirements. If your financial documents do not meet all of the specific requirements in the RFB instructions, all of your bids will be disqualified and you will not be considered for a contract. If you have already submitted your financial documents, it is not too late to submit corrections. Make sure you mail all required documents, including any corrected documents, in time for them to be RECEIVED by the Competitive Bidding Implementation Contractor (CBIC) on or before December 14, 2012. Faxed or e-mailed documents will not be accepted.

Editor’s Note:  CRE’s letter to the National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC) regarding their ill-conceived support for CMS’ competitive bidding program is attached here.

CRE will publish verbatim any response from NCHC in this space.

Below is the text of the letter to John Rother, President and CEO of the National Coalition on Health Care:

Re:      NCHC’s Support for Non-Competitive Bidding for Durable Medical Equipment

Dear Mr. Rother:

From: Home Care Magazine

Educate lawmakers on the benefits of the Market Pricing Program

by Tyler J. Wilson

In the closing weeks and months of 2012, we have an opportunity to replace Medicare’s dangerous Competitive Bidding Program with an alternative that preserves access to home care and saves the home medical equipment sector from the devastating effects of the bidding program. The alternative is outlined in H.R. 6490, a bipartisan bill that would eliminate the current Competitive Bidding Program and replace it with a state of the art payment system called the Market Pricing Program (MPP). This bill is our best shot at fixing this badly designed system that threatens to decimate the HME sector.

Editor’s Note: The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness stated that HHS was likely to “vastly expand” Medcare’s competive bidding to other types of medical equipment and services as explained here.  Now major organizations, in deeply misguided if well intentioned efforts to save money, are supporting an expansion of competitive bidding.  As previous noted, The National Coalition for Health Care is supporting an expansion of the program over 240 academicians called the antithesis of science.

More recently, the Center for American Progress has released its “Senior Protection Plan” (attached here) which states that the federal government should:

From: HME News

by: Liz Beaulieu

WASHINGTON – The elections may not have gone the way some HME stakeholders wanted, but there’s a silver lining for a bill to replace competitive bidding with a market-pricing program (MPP).

With the same president, as well as the same control of the House of Representatives and Senate, stakeholders believe more will get done in the upcoming lame duck session, increasing the chances of a vehicle for H.R. 6490.

From: CMS

Reminder: If you are a supplier bidding in the Round 1 Recompete of the Medicare Durable Medical Equipment, Prosthetics, Orthotics, and Supplies (DMEPOS) Competitive Bidding Program, you must submit your hardcopy financial documents on or before November 14, 2012, in order to be eligible to be notified if you have any missing financial documents. Don’t wait – send the required hardcopy documents TODAY!