A new report demonstrates the failure of central planners in Washington to reform Medicare.
A new report released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on September 28 demonstrates the failure of central planners in Washington to reform Medicare.
CBO’s report analyzes the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), a government office created by the Affordable Care Act (also known as “Obamacare”) whose mission is to test new ways of paying for and delivering health-care services in federal health programs through pilot programs called “models.” These models are required by law to reduce costs and/or improve quality of care, which they pursue by enacting major policy changes.
Policy experts predicted that this legal mandate, combined with CMMI’s focus on evidence-based policy-making and its insulation from the daily politics of Capitol Hill, would enable CMMI to transform federal health programs. By 2016, in CBO’s previous report on CMMI, it projected that the new authorities and flexibilities given to CMMI would empower it to save $34 billion over a decade. In its new report, CBO calculated savings would be $77.5 billion from 2021 to 2030 under the same analytical methodology.
