There's no HOPE for bidding plan
By HME News Staff
Updated Sat February 28, 2009
My name is Matthew Clawson, and my wife and I run a small business out of our home in Pocatello, Idaho. Our company name is HOPE (Home Oxygen Provider Express), and we are a Durable Medical Equipment (DME) dealer.
Our business was doing really well until Medicare decided to change the rules in the middle of the game to try cutting costs.
Medicare has lowered the amount of time they would pay for medical equipment from 48 months to 36 months.
Medicare has to know that this move will put about 150,000 small DME dealers like HOPE out of business. If you average five employees per company, that would amount to a loss of 750,000 jobs.
If that were not bad enough, Medicare has restarted the DMEPOS competitive bidding program, which will finish off the rest of the small DME businesses.
Putting an end to these poorly thought out programs would be a great way to keep jobs that are already in place, or start creating new jobs in this tumultuous time of economic downturn.
- Matt Clawson, HOPE (DME), Pocatello, Idaho
Comments