Congressmen Adrian Smith (R-NE), Vern Buchanan (R-FL), and Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) introduced the Strengthening Innovation in Medicare and Medicaid Act. This legislation aims to restore accountability for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) through commonsense guardrails.
“There’s no question CMMI lacks transparency. Worse, since its creation, it has failed to improve Medicare and Medicaid for beneficiaries — which is why I am introducing this bill to increase accountability and reassert congressional authority,” said Rep. Smith. “Proper oversight of CMMI will safeguard innovation and spur improvements in health care services to benefit both patients and providers. I thank Chairman Buchanan and Dr. Wenstrup for partnering with me on this important legislation.”
“Created under ObamaCare, CMMI has been allowed to operate and increase direct spending by billions of taxpayer dollars a year without Congressional approval or any meaningful oversight for far too long,” said Rep. Buchanan. “It’s past time Congress reassert much-needed oversight and put guardrails on this program to protect our nation’s seniors from further unnecessary overreach. As Chairman of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, I believe it’s essential we put Congress back in the driver’s seat instead of unaccountable bureaucrats. Thank you, Congressman Smith, for introducing this critical legislation.”
“The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) was created to find innovative ways to pay for and deliver care that can lower costs and improve care,” said Rep. Wenstrup. “According to a recent analysis, CMMI’s activities have increased direct spending by $5.4 billion between 2011 and 2020. This legislation would bring key reforms empowering Congress to conduct oversight over CMMI’s activities to ensure that tax-payer dollars are being used to pursue models that improve the future of health care delivery.”
CMMI was created to rapidly test new methods of payment or patient care intending to lower costs and improve patient outcomes. However, CMMI was given overly broad exemptions from existing regulations and judicial review, allowing these models to make sweeping changes without any Congressional oversight. Overly large and arbitrary models can cause uncertainty for health care providers and force patients into mandatory demonstration projects which impact the way they receive dialysis, cancer treatment, or prescription drugs. Additionally, a recent GAO study found that, since its inception, CMMI has failed to deliver any of the projected cost savings and instead resulted in billions of excess federal spending.
This legislation will reduce the uncertainty for both patients and providers by better defining the phases and steps in CMMI’s model testing process. It will ensure new models are appropriately limited in size and scope during initial testing, while reasserting Congressional authority to review model expansion, bringing much-needed transparency to CMMI operations, and creating additional opportunities to improve quality of care for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.