House Medicare Package Threatens to Freeze Payments for Laboratory Services Until Competitive Bidding Program Is Implemented
The House Ways and Means Committee has recently released draft Medicare Reform legislation. This draft contains provisions that would extend the freeze on the consumer price index (CPI) update for clinical laboratory services for another three years, while the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) develops and implements a competitive bidding system to pay for Part B lab services.
The Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) of 1997 mandated a five-year CPI freeze for laboratory services from 1998-2002, and this freeze has been in place for the past five years. Although the CPI freeze is currently scheduled to end at the close of 2002, a draft House Republican Medicare reform proposal would extend the freeze for an additional three years. To add insult to injury, the draft proposal would also require CMS to set up a competitive bidding system for clinical laboratory services in metropolitan areas. The bidding program would have to be implemented within three years – despite the fact that the agency has failed in several prior attempts to design a workable competitive bidding demonstration project for lab services, and despite the fact that a previous Air Force competitive bidding program for cytology services ended in disaster, as quality was severely impaired.
Let your Congressional Representative know that the lab industry, and those who perform the testing services, have taken more than their fair share of lumps in recent years. Besides the five-year freeze on inflation updates for lab services, the draw fee for blood collection has been frozen at $3.00 since 1984 – over 17 years! If a further freeze of inflation updates and/or an untested competitve bidding system is implemented for laboratory services, those programs would exacerbate existing personnel shortages and impair both quality of and access to clinical laboratory services. We ask you to write, fax, or e-mail your Member of Congress urging him or her to oppose these proposals in the draft GOP Medicare reform legislation that is expected to be marked up the House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce Committees within the next several weeks. A sample letter is attached to this alert.
You may find your Member of Congress at the following website: http://capitoladvantage.com/h2/.
It is especially important to write if your Representative is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee or Energy and Commerce Committee. Please refer to the following websites for committee membership and contact information: http://waysandmeans.house.gov/ and http://energycommerce.house.gov/.
Click on the link below to DOWNLOAD a sample letter to write to your U.S. Representative (Word format). WRITE TODAY! |
