Are you a Medicare beneficiary? If so, your healthcare has been sold to the lowest bidder, and we need your help to stop it!
Starting on July 1st, in DeKalb County and other areas around the country, certain durable medical equipment (oxygen, wheelchairs, hospital beds, walkers etc.) will only be provided by companies who won bids for those items through an auction process held by Medicare.
So, what’s the big deal? Everybody should be in favor of decreasing Medicare health care costs, right?
Under this auction program, however, Medicare made some huge mistakes that will affect your access to quality medical equipment and service. The ONLY criteria used to pick the bid ‘winners’ in this program was who provided the lowest bid prices. The bidders did not have to show that they are capable of setting up or servicing the items that they say they can provide, nor do they have to have a physical location in the area. Many of the bid ‘winners’ that are supposed to service DeKalb County, in fact, aren’t even located in the state of Illinois! How are these out-of-state providers supposed to provide medical equipment to residents of DeKalb County? Local providers like Lehan’s were not awarded bids, but these out-of-state providers were.
Average Provider Distance from 60115 ZIP Code for Bid Winners:
Oxygen: 480 miles away (43% of providers located out of state)
Hospital Beds: 523 miles away (69% located out of state)
Wheelchairs: 570 miles away (57% located out of state)
Walkers: 381 miles away (39% of located out of state)
In addition, over 200 economists and auction experts have said that this auction was poorly designed and would lead to huge problems, but the government refused to change the design, and we are left with the results. So, what can you do to help?
Please call your members of Congress and complain about this ‘competitive bidding’ process for durable medical equipment.
Rep Adam Kinzinger : (202) 225-3635
Rep Randy Hultgren: (202) 225-2976
You can also call 1-800-Medicare to complain about the program and how it will hurt access to medical equipment for Medicare beneficiaries!
Information on the competitive bidding program:
http://www.vgmdclink.com/uploads/library/e885d892bc7bb2a4a61d1a35f69f9b9c.pdf
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