President Bush’s plan to create an “ownership society” for part of the Medicare program is getting a skeptical reception from the home healthcare industry, including from the head of Lake Forest’s Apria Healthcare Group Inc.
Apria Chief Executive Lawrence Higby and some of his competitors were in a Wall Street Journal story late last month. The story cast a critical eye at a Bush administration proposal to require Medicare home healthcare patients to own their own oxygen equipment.
Administration officials, according to the Journal, contend that rental payments for the equipment are a waste of money.
If the change becomes law, Medicare would buy the equipment for a patient, who then would be able to bargain for oxygen supplies and maintenance separately on the basis of service and price.
Patients would “own the means of delivery,” said Rep. Bill Thomas, a Republican from central California.
That would prompt Apria and other home healthcare providers to compete better, according to Thomas.
Higby’s take: Owning oxygen gear is likely to be a burden to seniors, many of whom are too frail to negotiate savings that the president and others envision.
“The cornerstone of the misunderstanding is that all we are doing is providing equipment,” Higby told the Journal. “Medicare’s attitude is you only pay the police and fire departments when they come to the house. We maintain a 24-hour hotline. We have drivers named in wills.”
The biggest publicly traded home health companies “are conspicuous for their politically active Republican CEOs,” the story said.
Higby, a former Nixon White House aide, still is active in GOP politics. He’s a longtime member of the New Majority, an Orange County group of Republican business honchos who want the party to focus on economics rather than social issues.
Besides Higby, A. Malachi Mixon,a Bush fund-raiser who runs Apria rival Invacare Corp. of Ohio,also blasted the proposal. He called the changes “absolutely crazy.”
“They think you drop (oxygen) off like a stork,” he said. “It’s really a medical protocol.”
Beckman Seeking CFO
Beckman Coulter Inc., the Fullerton-based biomedical testing company, is in the market for a chief financial officer.
James Glover, Beckman’s senior vice president and chief financial officer, plans to retire as of June 30. Beckman has kicked off a search for Glover’s replacement.
Glover, 56, said Beckman’s undergone “tremendous change” in his 23 years with the company.
“Having implemented significant transformations to our business model over the last year with our reorganization and customer leasing policy, it is time for me to explore other opportunities in my career. I leave with knowledge that the company is in a strong financial position,” he said.
Last year, Beckman changed the way it accounts for leases of its instruments, spreading revenue over the life of the lease.
Glover became Beckman’s interim financial chief in 2003, after the departure of Amin Khalifa.
Khalifa now is financial chief at Apria.
Funding, UCI Ties
Coda Genomics Inc., a biotechnology company based in Irvine, said last week it closed a second round of funding worth about $1.6 million.
The Life Science Angels, an angel capital fund sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Silicon Valley Bank and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, led the investment.
Other investors include Monitor Ventures, a firm with offices in Palo Alto and Santa Monica, and the Tech Coast Angels, a network of investors who fund early-stage companies in the region.
Coda offers gene kits and services designed to assemble DNA into single genes guaranteed to express specific proteins.
The company was started in 2004 to commercialize National Science Federation-supported DNA assembly and protein expression technology from the laboratories of two University of California, Irvine professors,Richard Lathrop and G. Wesley Hatfield.
Kenneth Kelley from the Life Science Angels and Neal Bhadkamkar, Monitor’s managing partner, joined Coda’s board with the funding.
Bits and Pieces:
Michael Wilson of Mercer Health & Benefits discusses the “Mercer National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans 2005” at the March 16 meeting of the Orange County Employee Benefit Council. The meeting is at the Beckman Center at UC Irvine. Information: (714) 593-0873 Patient Care Technology Systems, Mission Viejo, said it’s integrating radio frequency identification tracking systems from Parco Wireless of Maine. Patient Care’s tracking software is used for patient data collection.
