The following a statement by Steve Pociask, President of the ACI:   “The CMS bidding process is so fatally flawed that it will fail to find sustainable market prices for medical equipment. This will create market shortages that will push efficient suppliers to bankruptcy and mean that many patients will not have access to medical [...]

University of Maryland Economics Professor Peter Cramton has just released an outstanding video on the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) plan to institute a failed medical bidding program.  Dr. Cramton explains how the program, originally intended to reduce spending, will actually lead to higher costs for patients and worse medical outcomes.  Nearly one year ago, he sent a letter to the [...]

Restaurants are a significant part of the economy.  Americans have a love affair with restaurants persisting even through our recent economic slump.   In 2010 there were 11 million food preparation and serving employees, paid a median wage of $9.02/hr.   In 2009, we spent an average of $2,619 per household for “food away from home” (largely [...]

Each year, Medicaid pays about $7 million to doctors and hospitals for certain preventable mistakes such as operating on the wrong body part or accidentally leaving a foreign object in a patient after surgery. That’s supposed to stop under a new federal rule. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a rule June [...]

In 2003 legislation required Medicare to begin a competitive bidding program for durable medical equipment.  Later legislation delayed implementation until 2009.  To support the original requirement in 2005 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ( CMS) began a study named Evaluation of National DMEPOS Competitive Bidding Program .  The results of all research activities [...]

You can read the entire letter to the white house here.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) choices in premium and subsidies were shown in Part 1.  Those estimates assume ACA will be implemented as intended.  At a family cost averaging about $10,000 per year (pre-subsidy), consumers will demand a working, effective system.  We are a very long way from that, and it is unclear that ACA [...]

Unless Congress makes major changes by 2014, we will face The Affordable Care Act.   Many American consumers are unhappy with some aspects of government-run health care and pundits rant on its failings and merits.  Consumers deserve a lucid presentation of the choices and costs that they will face directly, and in “Part 1” (of this [...]

At the 2nd World Congress on Bioavaialability & Bioequivalence 2011- Pharmaceuticals R&D Summit, “Economics of Biosimilars” June 7, 2011.

A recent study by the American Consumer Institute (ACI) concluded that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) new bidding program would likely lead to higher medical costs and reduced outcomes.  The study’s findings are consistent with the conclusions of many auction experts who have pointed to flaws in the CMS program that would [...]