Share of Cost, Congress, CMS: Slow down cuts to home oxygen
It is rare to get agreement – even when everyone is interested in the same thing – particularly when it comes to healthcare policies in Washington. It’s remarkable then, that the entire U.S. home respiratory therapy community has come together.
Something as fundamental as life-sustaining oxygen should never be in jeopardy. Yet, more than a million Medicare beneficiaries who depend on home oxygen and sleep therapies could find themselves on the losing end of a short-sighted new Congressional policy aimed at cutting costs.
Beginning in January of this year, Congress dramatically cut reimbursement for home oxygen services by applying competitive bid rates in geographic areas that were previously excluded from competitive bidding. Oxygen suppliers in these primarily rural parts of the country – where the costs of delivering services are already 13 percent higher – must now quickly try to adjust to funding shortfalls that are certain to complicate the lives of very vulnerable patients.