Tag: Senate Finance Committee

WASHINGTON - Senate Finance Committee leaders have asked CMS to delay applying the next round of Medicare reimbursement cuts in rural areas.In an April 18 letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., express their concerns that six months isn't long enough to detect and correct problems with the rollout of competitive bidding to non-bid areas.“It is unlikely that CMS will be able to monitor,...

WASHINGTON - Industry stakeholders and their champions in Congress are mapping out a strategy to stave off a second round of reimbursement cuts scheduled for July 1 in non-bid areas.Members of the Senate Finance Committee are in the process of drafting a letter to CMS, asking the agency to use its regulatory authority to delay the second round of cuts, says Tom Ryan, president and CEO of AAHomecare.“Six months is not long enough to determine the impact of the first cuts on access,” he...

WASHINGTON - The HME industry needs to hit the ground running now that a new bill to replace competitive bidding with a market-pricing program (MPP) has been dropped, say stakeholders.“This is not the beginning of the battle, this is the meat of the battle,” said Joel Marx, AAHomecare chairman. “There is no turning back.”Right out of the gate, H.R. 1717, the “Medicare DMEPOS Market Pricing Program Act of 2013,” had 25 co-sponsors. Reps. Tom Price, R-Ga., and...

WASHINGTON - Marilyn Tavenner, Barack Obama's nominee to oversee CMS, received the unanimous backing of the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday, according an article from Reuters. The panel's support could pave the way for a vote by the full Senate that could make Tavenner the program's first official administrator since 2006. A former hospital company executive and nurse, Tavenner has been CMS's acting administrator since 2011, and has broad bipartisan support. Among Tavenner's supporters is House...

WASHINGTON - If the amount of feedback that the Senate Finance Committee has received on how to improve the audit process is any consideration, expect it to push for big changes."We received almost 2,000 pages of recommendations in response to our solicitation, so it is taking a while to get through them," said Julia Lawless, a spokeswoman for the committee. "We hope to issue a high level summary before the end of the year."[See also: Former CMS official: The audit process 'is not working']The HME...

The Senate Finance Committee has corrected an error in its draft healthcare reform bill that states the elimination of the first-month purchase option for standard power wheelchairs will take effect next year. It will take effect in 2011, according to Seth Johnson, vice president of government affairs for Pride Mobility Products. “That essentially buys us 12 more months,” he said. "Clearly, we're still working to advance an alternative, but it's a positive development." Liz Beaulieu