Like many in the HME industry, Peter Falkson, CEO and co-founder of National Sleep Therapy was concerned and frustrated about the competitive bidding program. He wanted to take action and find a way to reach out to the public about a flawed program that they have no idea is coming.  Little did he know that the answer would come from his 10-year-old daughter.

"I was talking to my wife about competitive bidding" said Falkson, "telling her how it was so poorly aligned.  My daughter, Zoe, was in the room listening and she said, 'Dad, this is easy.  You just need to do what we did in my class.  Tell the world your story and if it is a good story, they will cause the change.'"

Zoe was one of fourteen fourth-graders who got together to take on Universal Pictures to change a movie trailer.  After collecting 57,000 signatures, the studio made the change.  They used a website called Change.org to create an on-line petition that ended up going viral.  Falkson said, "It worked for her class so I took her advice!"

"This is such a great idea," said Karyn Estrella, NEMED executive director.  "We have heard from Congress year after year that they don't hear enough about competitive bidding from their constituents but it's been difficult to get them involved. If we can get enough organizations to support this effort, we have a good chance of raising awareness that this program needs to be fixed.  20 NEMED members will be traveling to D.C. next week to ask Congress to add the Market Pricing Plan (MPP) to the doc fix bill.  If we can get enough signatures on this petition, it could strengthen our position.  NEMED will be sharing the link with AAHomecare, state associations and other organizations with a request that they share the petition in email, on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.  This petition needs to go viral."

Added Falkson, "If every HME company got half of their patient base to sign this petition, we would have a chance.  We need the grassroots voters to have a united voice to actually make a change."

Here is the link:  http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-competitive-bidding