Damaging GAO report released as HR-3790 hits 101 co-sponsors

One thing I have learned in the last 2 years about U.S. Government reports is that legislative aids use them to make decisions and they base their decision on the "Page One" summaries. Just two weeks ago I received the following email from a congressional aid in one of the Round One areas.
"The congressman asked that I contact the Congressional Research Service regarding the Competitive Bidding Program. Can you take a look at this and tell me why they are wrong. I need to know because if they are saying it saves money and does not disrupt service then it is hard to sign onto a bill scrapping it."

After reviewing the Government Accountability Office's November 2009, 65 page report on the Round One DMEPOS Competitive Bidding Program, I found the report biased and incomplete. I am afraid after reading the summary of this report, many legislative aids may be refusing to sign HR-3790 as well.
Why Biased?
The first paragraph on page one states:
"In nearly two-thirds of CBP round 1's price competitions-in which suppliers submitted bids to deliver items for a specific product category within a specific competitive bidding area (CBA)-the number of suppliers decreased by at least half. The largest decreases in suppliers were in the Miami CBA. CMS estimated that the reduction in Medicare payments for items acquired as a result of CBP (Competitive Bidding Program) round 1 would have averaged 26 percent when compared to payments under the Medicare fee schedule."

It seems the GAO had no problem stating in the first paragraph the 26% savings, but it seems that they intentionally hid a fact on page 19 that "The median number of suppliers across the 10 product categories decreased 87 percent in the Miami CBA".

Why was that statistic, which has a direct correlation to business closings and unemployment, left off the summary page but the 26% savings statistic included?
Another fact left off the first paragraph is from page 18: "Nearly two-thirds of the auctions conducted during CBP round 1 had decreases in the number of suppliers of 50 percent or more. Mail-order suppliers had the largest decrease (88 percent) while walkers and related accessories had the smallest decrease."
Additional Bias
Page one summary also explains: "The CBP has the potential to produce considerable benefits, including reducing overall Medicare spending for DME and limiting potential fraud through increased scrutiny of suppliers."

Which increased scrutiny are they referring to? Is it the increased scrutiny which allowed unlicensed companies to be awarded contracts? Is it the increased scrutiny which awarded bid contracts, shortly after certain bid winners repaid millions of dollars in penalties and settlements to the government for defrauding the Medicare program? Or is it the increased scrutiny which allowed out of state and out of area companies without any history of providing products to win bids as well?
Why Incomplete?
The report is incomplete because there are pages devoted to disqualification problems, but few sentences which discuss out of area or unlicensed bid winners and the fact that those unqualified bids were not removed from the proposed 26% savings. From Page 3 "Some DME suppliers and trade associations raised concerns about the CBP round 1, questioning several aspects of CMS's bid submission and contract award processes. They also questioned whether some winning suppliers could provide the volume of items and services their contracts should have been awarded to suppliers that had no prior business presence in a CBA"
From Page 36: "CMS and Palmetto GBA acknowledged and some trade association representatives told us that some suppliers were offered CBP contracts during CBP round 1 for product categories for which they were not properly licensed"
Those two sentences are the only admissions of unlicensed and inexperienced bid winners. The GAO could have asked Medicare to provide the number of bid winners that had never provided a product in the categories won. Medicare's database has that information. They did not even need to bother CMS and could have conducted their own study of out of area bid winners from the directories published by Medicare. The GAO also could have asked for an exact number of the contracted companies that won contracts that did not have the appropriate state licenses. The NSC has that information as well.
Limited discussion about the PAOC
Lost in all of this is the fact that the program is still a bid without financial accountability and that it will still allow inexperienced and out of area companies to win bids. The Program Advisory and Oversight Committee (PAOC) almost unanimously agreed that out of area and inexperienced companies should not be allowed to let their bids taint the pool of qualified offers in each area. The report also fails to mention that the majority of the PAOC also wanted to stop bid winners from selling their business and transferring bid contracts, because it essentially turned the program into a commodity. The limited mention of the PAOC only reveals that Medicare has still not made public the transcripts from any of the meetings of the second PAOC, which was created in 2009.
AMEPA is forwarding a letter to the GAO, requesting a more thorough report.