AARP Betrays Seniors

In its written testimony to the House Health Subcommitte for the hearing on CMS’ DME competitive bidding program, AARP demonstrated its disregard of the views of America’s Medicare beneficiaries.   AARP embraced competitive bidding even though seniors and their families are angry, frightened and deeply opposed to the program which will terminate many Medicare beneficiaries’ access to the home medical equipment supplier of their choice.

In their testimony, AARP stated:

“AARP believes that competitive bidding should be used for pricing durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics and supplies (DMEPOS), as long as quality and access are not compromised by the competitive bidding process.  If the Competitive Bidding Program achieves the goal of setting more appropriate payment amounts for DMEPOS items, it will result in reduced beneficiary out-of-pocket expenses as well as savings to taxpayers and to the Medicare program.”

As CRE noted in their testimony however,

“Maintaining access to home medical equipment, and to the quality services essential for its provision and use, is a substantial concern for Medicare beneficiaries and to their families. We have received hundreds of calls on our toll-free hotline from people concerned about what the Medicare competitive bidding program would mean for health and their peace of mind. Many of the callers expressed concern and fear that the competitive bidding program would mean that they would lose access to the DME care providers they know and trust.

Many of the callers to our hotline also expressed strongly held views that the competitive bidding program reflected a lack of concern about their well-being by our nation’s leadership. We have posted the transcripts of the calls along with the original audio recordings on our Competitive Bidding Interactive Public Docket’s Discussion Forum so you can hear the voices of the people affected by this program, http://www.thecre.com/Forum.”

CRE calls on AARP to listen to voices of Medicare beneficiaries and retract their support of competitive bidding.

See AARP press statement http://www.aarp.org/about-aarp/press-center/info-09-2010/dme_statement.html

Listen to the voices of Medicare beneficiaries http://www.thecre.com/Forum.