On June 13, Elizabeth Fowler, director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), will testify before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health on value-based care. The hearing will give members of the House a chance to ask Fowler about CMMI’s “challenges to achieving their intended mission and whether Congress needs to step in to provide clearer direction or take other steps to ensure beneficiaries are best served,” according to a committee statement.
CMMI was created under the 2010 health care law to test pilots aimed at reducing costs and improve quality in Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program through innovative changes to payments and service delivery. These delivery changes have included the expanded Home Health Value Based Purchasing Model (one of only four CMMI models to expand nationally), the Medicare Care Choices Model, and the Value-Based Insurance Design Model. But CMMI has come under scrutiny for not meeting those expectations after a Congressional Budget Office report found most of those demonstrations launched between 2011 and 2020 did not save money, and actually cost the government $5.4 billion.
The hearing comes on the heels of a request from House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX) and Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) that the Government Accountability Office investigate CMMI based on the findings of the CBO report.