WASHINGTON, D.C. – It’s been less than two months since Kim Brummett, senior vice president of Regulatory Affairs at AAHomecare and Cara Bachenheimer (pictured), head of Government Affairs at Brown & Fortunato addressed Medtrade attendees in Dallas.

In the political whirlwind of the first quarter, competitive bidding has been on the backburner. But what are the chances it could come back in 2025? In case you missed it, Bachenheimer gave her thoughts on the topic during a Medtrade educational session in Dallas. Here’s what she had to say…

“It is unclear whether this administration is going to reinvigorate this program [competitive bidding] or not. Last year [2024] we were told by relatively high-level folks at CMS that they were putting out a regulation to revamp the program again, but we don’t know what that meant.

“We don’t know if they were going to change the lead item pricing or any of the changes that they made. We didn’t have any good ideas that we wanted to give them. It’s completely unclear whether this administration [Trump] is going to say, ‘Hey we need to move forward with competitive bidding.’

“But if they do, we would see a proposed regulation and a final regulation, so obviously that takes time. That regulatory process takes approximately a year. That gives us a little bit of advance notice in terms of what they’re thinking is.

“It is possible that competitive bidding is not a priority. We’re a really small part of the Medicare program, and there may not be the staff to actually write the regulation. Some of the folks who we’ve dealt with are still there at this point. We don’t think that anybody in the DME Payment Policy is gone at this point.

“Apparently they are focused on the innovation center which the previous administration had a big focus on. I’m not sure that they’ve been thinking about our sector, which is fine. If I had to bet, I would say that it [competitive bidding] will not be this year.”