SOURCES SOUGHT
R -- Macroeconomic Consulting
- Notice Date
- 6/14/2010
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541720
— Research and Development in the Social Sciences and Humanities
- Contracting Office
- Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Office of Acquisition and Grants Management, 7500 Security Blvd., C2-21-15, Baltimore, Maryland, 21244-1850
- ZIP Code
- 21244-1850
- Solicitation Number
- APP101708
- Archive Date
- 7/21/2010
- Point of Contact
- John A Cruse, Phone: 410-786-0520
- E-Mail Address
-
john.cruse@cms.hhs.gov
(john.cruse@cms.hhs.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- This is an 8(a) and Small Business Sources Sought notice. This is NOT a solicitation for proposals, proposal abstracts, or quotations. The purpose of this notice is to obtain information regarding: (1) the availability and capability of qualified 8(a) sources and Small Business; and (2) their size classification relative to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for the proposed acquisition. Your responses to the information requested will assist the Government in determining the appropriate acquisition method, including whether a set-aside is possible. An organization that is not considered an 8(a) and Small Business under the applicable NAICS code should not submit a response to this notice. THIS IS STRICTLY MARKET RESEARCH. THE CENTERS FOR MEDICARE & MEDICAID SERVICES (CMS) WILL NOT ENTERTAIN QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS MARKET RESEARCH. BACKGROUND: CMS intends to award a 2 year consulting contract to provide the agency with both short-run (10 year) and long-range (75 year) macroeconomic projections. The projections will be used in production of short-run projections of National Health Expenditures (NHE) and production of the annual report of the Medicare Trustees. Projections may also be required in support of presentations to be made to a DHHS technical panel to be convened in late 2010 to consider methods for projecting long-range aggregate health expenditures. The prospective vendor must have access to a detailed structural/sectoral model of the U.S. economy equipped to make 75-year economic projections and a demonstrated ability to adapt that model to the needs of the agency in short-turnaround times. A standard scenario will involve projecting the economy-wide implications of an assumed path of growth for the U.S. health sector. Multifactor productivity projections plausibly aligned with historic BLS series will also be required. Another important requirement is multidimensional consistency of outputs with historical aggregates. REQUIREMENTS: Please Demonstrate an ability to: (1) Standard Scenario A standard macroeconomic scenario calibrated to replicate a state of the world in which SSA economic and demographic assumptions and CMS assumptions about the path of health sector expenditure/aggregate demand all hold. (2) Support for NHE 10-year projections. The short-run projections of National Health Expenditures (NHE) require projections of key macroeconomic variables including: growth in gross domestic product (GDP), overall price growth, and disposable personal income (DPI) growth. With the exception of DPI, the Social Security Administration (SSA) develops assumptions for these macroeconomic variables and, in principle, the CMS 10-year NHE projection should be consistent with these assumptions. Output for this task will require updating because the timing of the NHE short term projections is such that when NHE work begins the SSA economic assumptions are already several months old. As work proceeds, the assumptions are updated via discussions with SSA economists and examinations of the latest commercial and government forecasts and final supporting projections of a consistent DPI series will be generated. (3) Economy-wide private non-farm business multi-factor productivity estimates. The vendor will provide a forecast of annual economy-wide private nonfarm business multi-factor productivity in the aggregate and by major business sectors (MFP) for the years 2009 through 2019; provide specific documentation regarding the method(s) used to develop this forecast; provide an evaluation of how well the model aligns to the historical series of private nonfarm business MFP as published by the BLS. The PPACA requires use of forecasts of this series in updating Medicare fee-for-service payments and CMS/OACT is interested in receiving a detailed forecast of this series in order to evaluate alternative expectations of future productivity growth. The vendor will also report on its view of the long-range trends in these series consistent with its overall economic modeling effort. (4) Support for OACT work in connection with technical panel about long-range projections. Later this year the Secretary of HHS is convening on behalf of the Medicare Trustees a technical panel to evaluate methods for projecting long-range medical expenditures. As with annual work on the report of the Medicare Trustees, it is expected that special scenarios will need to be produced for the technical panel in order to illustrate implications of the long-range medical expenditure projections, including possible implications of health reform legislation. (5) 75-year medical spending projections. The vendor will provide ongoing support to CMS in developing 75 year projections of the health sector and the economy. This support will include: (a) 75-year simulations of the health sector and the economy under alternative assumptions (including assumptions generated by the OACT computable general equilibrium (CGE) model); (b) analysis of the economic implications of different financing options of government medical expenditures (e.g., increasing government deficits, increasing taxes); (c) analysis of Input-Output data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis in support of the CGE model. A new aspect of long-range projections in coming years will be modeling the long-range effects of health reform legislation. (6) SIC to NAICS conversion. If the production sectors of the vendor's model are currently the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system, no later than October 15, 2011 the vendor shall arrange to rebase its model using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) so that all projections for the 2012 reporting year will be consistent with the current National Income and Product Account and Input-Output data. (7) Extending the range of substantive issues to be investigated with scenarios Subsequent to award of the contract the vendor in consultation with CMS shall develop a plan for production of scenarios intended to investigate the following types of issues: a) Developing a broader macroeconomic and industrial context for the annual Trustees' projections. b) Developing alternative projections given different rates of growth for productivity and the labor force. c) Evaluating the fiscal and economic sustainability of the long-term health care projections such as by calibrating scenarios similar to those specified by the Committee on the Fiscal Future of the United States in Choosing the Nation's Fiscal Future (National academies Press, 2010) (Necessarily scenarios along these lines may require deviations from standard agency economic assumptions and current law perspectives.) d) Investigating the impacts of technology, such as electronic health care records, on the demand, supply, and sustainability of health care expenditures, using microeconomic studies to quantify the industry-level impacts. e) Assessing the industry and macroeconomic effects of alternative health policies, such as different cost-sharing schemes or the elimination of inefficient spending, that have been quantified at the product or industry level by various microeconomic studies. f) Developing new data estimates for the differential levels of employer-sponsored health benefits offered across industries. (This effort would require the mining of other data sets, especially non-government data.) g) Expanding the NIPA-NHE correspondence to include a funding source dimension to the crosswalk. This dimension will help us to trace how funding source might affect the choice of expenditure and vice-versa. h) Other issues pertinent to long-range projection of health expenditures and their implications as agreed upon by CMS and the contractor. i) Investigating the long-range implications/feasibility of differential cost growth rates in subparts of the U.S. health sector, such as Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance, particularly in light of health reform legislation. CMS also requests the following additional information: Business Information: • DUNS • Company Name • Company Address • Current GSA Schedules appropriate to this Sources Sought • Do you have a Government approved accounting system? If so, please identify the agency that approved the system. • Type of company (e.g., small business, 8(a), woman owned, veteran, etc.) as validated via the Central Contractor Registration (CCR). All offerors must register on the CCR located at http://www.ccr.gov/index.asp • Company Point of Contact, Phone and Email address Teaming Arrangements: • All teaming arrangements should also include the above-cited information and certifications for each entity on the proposed team. Additional Information: • Potential offerors are hereby advised that their accounting system must be adequate for determining costs applicable to the contract • FAR Clause 52.219-14 Limitations of Subcontracting will be incorporated into the solicitation and resultant contract. Information Submission Instructions • Email responses addressing the above specific requests to the following address:John.Cruse@cms.hhs.gov. All responses are due by 12:00 PM local time Baltimore, MD July 6, 2010. • Please be advised that email transmitted files over 5 megabytes are not delivered during standard working hours, are only released from the CMS server after 5:00 PM EST, and may affect the timeliness of your response. • Please limit your documents to the following Page Size, Font Type and Size, Spacing and Page Numbering - Preference for Microsoft Word (or PDF) document with page size 8.5 by 11 inches. Font shall be Times New Roman Size 12 with no less than single spacing between lines. The maximum number of pages for submission is 10 pages. Disclaimer and Important Notes This notice does not obligate the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response. The Government reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate. Any organization responding to this notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed to allow the Government to determine the organization's qualifications to perform the work. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. After a review of the responses received, a pre-solicitation synopsis and solicitation may be published in Federal Business Opportunities. However, responses to this notice will not be considered adequate responses to a solicitation. Confidentiality No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response. The Government reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information in any resultant solicitation(s). On behalf of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, we thank you for your interest.
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/HHS/HCFA/AGG/APP101708/listing.html)
- Place of Performance
- Address: 7500 Security Boulevard, Baltimore, Maryland, 21244, United States
- Zip Code: 21244
- Zip Code: 21244
- Record
- SN02176674-W 20100616/100614234503-4fab9035dfaca31ba1aa279c3de58d87 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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