Center for American Progress Embraces Program Facing a “Near Certainty of Failure;” Offers Ray of Reasonableness

Editor’s Note: The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness stated that HHS was likely to “vastly expand” Medcare’s competive bidding to other types of medical equipment and services as explained here.  Now major organizations, in deeply misguided if well intentioned efforts to save money, are supporting an expansion of competitive bidding.  As previous noted, The National Coalition for Health Care is supporting an expansion of the program over 240 academicians called the antithesis of science.

More recently, the Center for American Progress has released its “Senior Protection Plan” (attached here) which states that the federal government should:

Expand competitive bidding by 2014 for durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics, and supplies nationwide.

and

Extend competitive bidding by 2015 to medical devices, laboratory tests, advanced imaging services, and all other health care products. For instance, President George W. Bush proposed competitive bidding for clinical laboratory services in his budget for fiscal year 2009.

There is a ray of reasonableness, however, in CAP’s proposal.  Specifically, the NGO calls for establishing “a panel of business and academic experts to govern the process.”  Thus, CAP is echoing the thrust of the Market Pricing Plan (MPP) Act , H.R. 6490 which calls on HHS to establish a true auction utilizing “an open and transparent process that involves all relevant stakeholders” which would be overseen by an Auction Expert to take the lead in designing the program and a Market Monitor “to monitor the design, development, and functioning of the auction… The market monitor shall report and be accountable to the Secretary.” 

CAP should support the H.R. 6490 instead of CMS’ current non-competitive bidding plan which, as a senior Congressional Budget Official explained, faces “a high probability of failure in the near future. There is near certainty of failure sometime down the road.”