{"id":253,"date":"2012-04-19T22:26:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T02:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=253"},"modified":"2012-04-19T22:26:00","modified_gmt":"2012-04-20T02:26:00","slug":"medicare-to-expand-competitive-bidding-on-equipment-nytimes-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=253","title":{"rendered":"Medicare to Expand Competitive Bidding on Equipment &#8211; NYTimes.com"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/04\/19\/health\/policy\/medicare-to-expand-competitive-bidding.html?emc=tnt&amp;tntemail1=y\">Medicare to Expand Competitive Bidding on Equipment &#8211; NYTimes.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Medicare officials estimated that competitive bidding for home medical equipment would save more than $42 billion in the next 10 years \u2014 $17 billion for beneficiaries and $25.7 billion for the Medicare program.<\/p>\n<p>Ms. Sebelius said the savings showed the value of the health care overhaul signed into law by President Obama in 2010.<\/p>\n<p>The competitive bidding program was established, with support from many Republicans, under a 2003 law that added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. In 2008, Congress temporarily delayed the program and terminated supplier contracts that were in effect. The 2010 law expanded the program.<\/p>\n<p>Medicare has historically used a fee schedule to pay suppliers. Officials gave this example of the savings: Under the fee schedule, Medicare would have paid $2,080 for an oxygen concentrator last year, and the beneficiary would have paid 20 percent, or $416. By contrast, with competitive bidding, Medicare paid about $1,395, and the beneficiary paid $279. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8211; Sent using Google Toolbar<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Medicare to Expand Competitive Bidding on Equipment &#8211; NYTimes.com: Medicare officials estimated that competitive bidding for home medical equipment would save more than $42 billion in the next 10 years &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=253\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Medicare to Expand Competitive Bidding on Equipment &#8211; NYTimes.com&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[39,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defending-ppaca","category-ppaca"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}