A new economic study finds that the competitive bidding program for durable medical equipment (DME) being rolled out by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) would lead to reduced competition, lower quality of care, and higher costs.Two Robert Morris University professors, Brian O'Roark, PhD and Stephen Foreman, PhD, conducted the study, which was released this week by the Pennsylvania Association of Medical Suppliers (PAMS)."The limits on competition that CMS is proposing to implement will have great potential to produce higher prices and lower service quality," Foreman stated. "The franchise bidding process that CMS is implementing is at odds with everything that we know about markets, efficiency and incentives. We should be encouraging added competition in the market, not limiting it. Limits on competition like those proposed by CMS rarely, if ever, make consumers better off."