Oh my! Big players Invacare and Scooter Store have parted company ending what watchers assumed was a very profitable arrangement for both. Must be that thing about strange bedfellows.

Interesting that the tens of millions of dollars that Scooter Store has been fined over the last few years for, ahhh, let’s call it unusual business practices wasn’t enough to end the love affair but competitive bidding was.

Competitive bidding? That’s Medicare’s fairly new scheme to have medical equipment dealers bid for Medicare’s monster wheelchair bucks.

The small independent equipment dealers are concerned that they will be hosed by the giants such as Scooter Store. The giants of course want to hose them if possible. There’s more money in being the hoser than the hosed. Tuned in wheelchair users and many clinicians are concerned that this will further foster Medicare’s efforts at supplying wheelchairs to clients based on a wheelchair, is a wheelchair, is a wheelchair…

Invacare announced last week that it will no longer sell power wheelchairs to the Scooter Store, claiming that, when it comes to national competitive bidding, the nation’s largest mobility provider is “against everything the industry stands for.”
Read the rest at HME News.

Now imagine this. If there are only a small number of suppliers who can low bid the lion’s share of the action they will most certainly be pressing the manufactures for lower pricing based on volume and need for competitive pricing. Can manufactures stand the profit cuts? Do they want to stand them? Sounds like everyone is positioning for the upcoming changes. Everyone but wheelchair using clients of Medicare. The reality? Who is really going to get hosed?

If you want to know more about competitive bidding go over to RehabHacker and ask some questions. Paul over there may have a handle on this nasty mess.