Robert (Bob) R. Hearn, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences and Litigation & Business Disputes practices, in the firm’s St. Petersburg office, was quoted in 360 DX, in “As Congress Preps PAMA Reform, Legislators Ask CMS to Delay Law’s Implementation,” by Adam Bonislawski. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
Congress is expected in the next month to introduce new legislation for reforming the Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA) as legislators and the lab industry move on from the Saving Access to Laboratory Services Act (SALSA), which has to date been the most promising legislative vehicle for PAMA reform. …
Robert Hearn, a healthcare attorney with law firm Epstein Becker Green, said the letter suggests concerns within Congress about whether it will have enough time to pass PAMA reform or another delay before the end of the year.
"Congress is on summer recess. They are getting ready to blow back into Washington, and they are going to have to deal with keeping the government online and running by the end of September," he said. "Then after that the question is, are they going to have enough time to think about [PAMA reform] before Jan. 1?"
Hearn said that, legally speaking, the "proposals in the letter are not beyond the pale." He suggested that the legislators were perhaps on the most solid legal ground with their request that CMS change and delay the payment reporting period, which would also have the effect of delaying test price cuts.
He noted that from a practical standpoint it is hard to identify where a legal challenge to CMS might come from if it does choose to delay PAMA implementation along the lines laid out in the letter.
"No one in the lab industry is going to care, right?" he said. "You'd almost have to have some ad hoc public interest group formulated to challenge it, and I'm not really sure who the members of that group would be that would actually have standing to advance a legal challenge."
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