Letters to the editor

No one can stay in business with these new bids (Reaction to bid amounts: 'I don't know if we can make our way through this,' HME News, August 2010). Even if they were able to double their volume, do they have the capital needed to support the growth? I certainly do not.

If you're lucky and make 5% before taxes, what do you think is going to happen to your profit with an average 20% reduction in your margin? What school of economics did these guys go to? I am a CPA with 35 years of experience in four different manufacturing companies. I understand cost. These bidders have no idea what they are doing to themselves. Even more profoundly, the folks at CMS should realize that nobody can stay in business at these prices.

Insane, bizarre, and certainly a death wish.

Maybe Congress should make the U.S. Postal Service reduce the cost of a stamp by 20%, even 10%. Yikes, we would see riots.

2011 will be a wakeup call for CMS as these bid prices will bring DMEs to their knees and who is going o suffer? Of course the patient.

Does CMS realize how many patients do not make their co-pays? I will not deliver an item unless we collect the co-pay. If we do a rental item and they do not make their monthly co-pays, we will pick up the equipment.

Looks like to me what is going to happen is we are going to have a lot less DME companies and big boxes like Wal-Mart.

In the end, the patients are the ones who are going to suffer. For me, all I will lose is my life savings and my house that I used to acquire MediRest in January 2007. Hopefully, I will still have my health.

- Jim fallon, president/owner, Medirest, Inc.,

Birmingham, Ala.