CQRC Commends W&M Health Subcommittee Leaders for Chronic Disease Care Hearing, Underscoring Need for Medicare Oxygen Modernization
In a letter to the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee, the CQRC applauds the Health Subcommittee’s focus on chronic disease management and urges passing the bipartisan SOAR Act.
WASHINGTON – The Council for Quality Respiratory Care (CQRC) today sent a letter to the U.S. House Ways & Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Vernon Buchanan and Ranking Member Lloyd Doggett II, in response to today’s hearing, “Modernizing Care Coordination to Prevent and Treat Chronic Disease.” The letter expresses the CQRC’s appreciation for holding a hearing to consider ways to address challenges in diagnosing and managing chronic diseases and acknowledged the important bipartisan work of Representatives David Valadao, Julia Brownley, Adrian Smith, and Gabe Evans for introducing H.R. 2902, the Supplemental Oxygen Access Reform (SOAR) Act, which aims to address barriers to supplemental oxygen for those with chronic respiratory disease.
In the letter, CQRC highlights how “the SOAR Act would reform the Medicare supplemental oxygen benefit to eliminate access barriers patients battling chronic respiratory diseases who require supplemental oxygen face under current policies.” The legislation includes provisions to protect against fraud and abuse, create a stable Medicare reimbursement rate, and to recognize the importance of respiratory therapy services.
For patients with chronic respiratory needs who rely on supplemental oxygen, therapies like liquid oxygen help reduce symptoms such as breathlessness, fatigue, and dizziness and improve patients’ quality of life. However, the CQRC notes how recent rounds of Medicare’s competitive bidding program (CBP) throughout the past decade have “resulted in the rates for liquid oxygen modalities falling below the cost of providing the therapy,” and, therefore, have made providing and servicing this modality of care nearly impossible.
The CQRC encourages the Subcommittee to collaborate with the SOAR Act sponsors to secure its passage by the end of the year. The SOAR Act would address the challenges faced by Americans living with serious chronic conditions, including respiratory and pulmonary disease by stabilizing supplemental oxygen reimbursement rates and locking in savings achieved in previous rounds of Medicare’s CBP by removing these products from future rounds of competitive bidding.
“While the problem of access to supplemental oxygen to manage chronic respiratory diseases is most profound with regard to the liquid oxygen modality, stakeholders recognize that if the proposed rule CMS released in the summer of 2025 were finalized without modification, patients would also experience similarly profound access problems for other oxygen modalities. Hundreds of suppliers have already stopped providing any supplemental oxygen to Medicare beneficiaries, and some manufacturers no longer produce the equipment and supplies prescribed by physicians,” the letter notes.
Additionally, the CQRC’s letter emphasizes that, unlike patients with other chronic diseases, those who require supplemental oxygen have seen very little innovation over the past 25 years. By stabilizing Medicare reimbursement rates, researchers and innovators would be more likely to invest in the development of innovative treatment options for respiratory patients, and the SOAR Act would also encourage the use of technology to make it easier for CMS to prevent fraudulent or abusive claims by requiring Medicare contractors to adopt electronic data elements (i.e., a template) that CMS has already created.
The CQRC expresses its commitment to working with the Subcommittee, patient advocates, health care professionals, and supplemental oxygen stakeholders to advance and hopefully pass the SOAR Act before the end of 2025.
To read the CQRC’s letter to House Ways & Means Health Subcommittee leadership, click here.
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The Council for Quality Respiratory Care (CQRC) is a coalition of the nation’s leading home oxygen therapy providers and manufacturing companies providing in-home patient services and respiratory equipment, including liquid oxygen, oxygen concentrators, and sleep therapy devices to Medicare beneficiaries who rely upon home oxygen therapy to maintain their independence and enhance their quality of life. Learn more at cqrc.org.
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