JAMA Network April 5, 2021
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is now more than 10 years old, and so is one of the law’s most important creations: the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). Before the CMMI, the scientifically guided redesign of US health care financing and delivery had no principal governmental home or sponsor (ie, there was no analogue to the role the National Institutes of Health has for biomedical research). With CMMI, the health care system has that; or, more accurately, it could.
As stipulated in the ACA, the role of CMMI is “…to test innovative payment and service delivery models to reduce program expenditures…while preserving or enhancing the quality of care furnished to individuals….” The text of the...