With just months left in office, the Obama administration is flexing its strongest regulatory muscle — the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.
This center, created under the Affordable Care Act, is the administration's control center for regulatory change, and is powered by $10 billion in funds, according to a report from STAT. "It always was known within the department how broad that authority is," said Kathleen Sebelius, former HHS secretary, according to STAT. "[CMMI] is probably the single most potentially impactful element of the ACA."
The CMMI's portfolio is currently 34 initiatives deep, counting both those recently announced and those being tested, according to the report. Initiatives are tackling primary care delivery, disease prevention and the industry's hottest issue — prescription drug costs. But some of these initiatives will just be getting started when President Obama leaves office Jan. 20, 2017. For example, the second part of the administration's highly contested Medicare Part B drug payment model is slated to go into effect after Jan. 1, 2017, according to the report. Timing means this fledgling initiative and others — and perhaps even the entire CMMI itself — will be incredibly vulnerable as a new president takes the helm in 2017.
With the possibility of its work being undone looming, the CMMI can only hope some of its successful regulatory reforms stick. And though the center has had some failures, overall it counts many successes. According to STAT, a 2015 government report found new payment models — many of which were created by CMMI — are credited with helping save thousands of lives and billions of dollars because of fewer hospital complications.
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