Full article reprinted from "The Gray Sheet" - August 10, 2009
Clinical laboratory stakeholders are trying to prevent a 20% Medicare lab co-payment provision from making it into the Senate Finance Committee's highly anticipated health care reform package. Read more...
Labs, Test Makers To Finance Committee: Say "No" To Medicare Co-Pay
Full article reprinted from "The Gray Sheet" - August 10, 2009
Clinical laboratory stakeholders are trying to prevent a 20% Medicare lab co-payment provision from making it into the Senate Finance Committee's highly anticipated health care reform package.
There is currently no patient cost-sharing for lab services under Medicare, but reinstating a pre-1984 policy that required beneficiaries to pay a portion of testing service costs out of pocket has been discussed before. The idea was last raised, but ultimately dropped, in 2003 as part of the debate over the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act (1 'The Gray Sheet' Sept. 29, 2003).
Over the past two weeks, chatter on the issue in and around Capitol Hill has resurfaced. According to lobbyists close to the issue, the lab co-pay provision is apparently on the table as a means to help pay for the Finance Committee bill, which has most recently been estimated to cost $900 billion.
Just the prospect of the co-pay provision was enough to spark a group of labs, lab professionals and test manufacturers to take public action. The loosely formed Clinical Laboratory Coalition, including Roche Diagnostics, Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, Becton Dickinson, Genzyme Genetics and Genomic Health, sent a 2 letter July 31 to Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Ranking Member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to convey their "strongest opposition" to the measure.
The American Clinical Laboratory Association (ACLA) and the American Association of Clinical Chemists were also among the 26 signatories.
The co-pay plan would add about $23 billion toward Finance Committee negotiators' efforts to arrive at a budget-neutral bill. The lab coalition contends, however, that it would add up to a "staggering new $23 billion cost shift to seniors."
Opponents of the plan, many of which fought the co-pay in 2003, are rehashing one of the primary arguments made six years ago: that the cost of collecting the fees would often exceed fee amounts.
A quarter of a million bills would need to be mailed every day, according to the coalition, and for many popular lab tests the co-pay would be less than $2.
The proposal "requires the collection of that $23 billion in the most administratively inefficient manner imaginable," the coalition writes.
- David Filmore
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