House Energy & Commerce, Ways & Means Panels Hold Hearings on Value-Based Care
On June 13, 2024, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health convened a hearing titled Checking-In on CMMI: Assessing the Transition to Value-Based Care. Dr. Elizabeth Fowler, Ph.D., J.D., Deputy Administrator and Director, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (Innovation Center) was the sole witness.
During the hearing, Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) expressed concerns that Medicare's movement toward value-based care has stagnated, highlighting a September 2023 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report which found that Innovation Center activities increased spending by almost $5.5 billion. Several members of the Subcommittee, including Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks, MD (R-IA) and John Joyce, MD (R-Pa.), discussed with Dr. Fowler the need to better engage specialists in value-based models. Dr. Fowler explained that the Innovation Center's goal is to see all Medicare beneficiaries in accountable care organizations (ACOs) or advanced primary care arrangements by 2030, which will necessarily include specialty engagement in value-based care.
On June 26, 2024, the House Ways & Means Committee Subcommittee on Health held a hearing titled Improving Value-Based Care for Patients and Providers. During the hearing, committee members heard testimony from representatives of Main Street Health, a rural value-based care company, and Coastal Carolina Health Care and its ACO. Dr. Matthew Philip, an internal medicine physician working in an independent multi-specialty group, and Dr. Robert Berenson, a former general internist and current Urban Institute fellow, also testified. Members and witnesses agreed that efforts to transition to value-based care have produced mixed results. Administrative and regulatory burdens and misaligned financial incentives were identified as the major barriers to increasing participation in value-based payment systems.