American Association for Homecare (AAHomecare) CEO/President Tom Ryan has a message for HME stakeholders: Prepare for an end-of-year push aimed at Medicare competitive bidding relief.
In an Oct. 5 letter to AAHomecare members, Ryan focused on the continuing effort to ease Medicare funding cuts related to rural DME suppliers.
“Persistent and passionate efforts of HME providers over the past 18 months have brought us to a point where we’re close to getting competitive bidding rural relief legislation passed,” Ryan said. “But as we’ve seen before, those last few yards needed to get the House and Senate to agree on a single bill are not likely to come easily. Now I’m asking the HME community to lay it all on the line to make sure we get a bill passed in the weeks ahead.”
Ryan is concentrating on Congress’s return after the November election: “In recent discussions, our champions on Capitol Hill and staffers on important committees have demonstrated continued strong interest in getting legislation passed that will roll back the July 1 cuts. In addition, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) has said that he plans on seeing this issue addressed during the lame-duck session.”
The AAHomecare president asked stakeholders to continue to reach out to their members of Congress and to emphasize how Medicare cuts are hurting suppliers’ ability to provide quality DME and related services to vulnerable beneficiaries.
“With the House and Senate recessed through the elections, some people might be inclined to think that this is a period where your efforts aren’t needed right now, but that’s not the case,” Ryan said. “In fact, this is one of the best times to try and reach out to a staffer who handles healthcare issues in a Congressional office, as their schedules are not taken up with staffing hearings or monitoring current legislative proceedings.”
