DME supplier lying to me

VikingGnome wrote:Why does Medicare do that? It seems that is very wasteful to pay $500 more than the actual cost of the machine. There is certainly incentive for DMEs to provide the lowest cost equipment possible knowing they'll get double their cost back from Medicare.

A good DME will provide you advice, help you adjust the machine, collect data, answer questions, etc. They pay up front for the machines, but only get paid over time as the rental income comes in.

I suspect DMEs pay a lot less than $800 for the machine. ResMed restricts online suppliers from selling the machines below a certain price.

VikingGnome wrote:
Why does Medicare do that? It seems that is very wasteful to pay $500 more than the actual cost of the machine. There is certainly incentive for DMEs to provide the lowest cost equipment possible knowing they'll get double their cost back from Medicare.

That is because they are supposed to give you 5 hours at $100 per hour of high quality help in adjusting to cpap?

VikingGnome wrote:Why does Medicare do that? It seems that is very wasteful to pay $500 more than the actual cost of the machine. There is certainly incentive for DMEs to provide the lowest cost equipment possible knowing they'll get double their cost back from Medicare.

It would be interesting to see what the history is for CPAP prices. It could be that the price paid to DMEs for CPAPs hasn't changed much while the retail price has continually come down so there is a much wider price/payment gap today than there was 20 years ago.

As to renting vs buying outright keep in mind that most DME equipment, wheelchairs, potty chairs, hospital beds, oxygen machines, etc., are used by patients who are approaching end of life and so the use period may only be days, weeks, or a few months at most. Seldom would it be years. Medicare deals with thousands upon thousands of DME situations (meaning types of equipment and locales, not numbers of patients) and aims to keep policies somewhat uniform. So in the grand scheme of Medicare DME payments CPAPs are a small player, and a somewhat odd ball one to boot.