Medicare’s Access Model Is a Worthy Experiment

The authority the Affordable Care Act (ACA) conferred on the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) to run novel experiments is arguably too broad and unconstrained. With minimal guardrails, the temptation for both Democratic and Republican administrations is to use CMMI to get around legal impediments to favored policies. But there are also some tests that are worth conducting that might not surface without something like CMMI allowing them to proceed. Such is the case with the Trump administration’s Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions (ACCESS) Model. It is a genuine experiment with uncertain but potentially meaningful positive results, and also a design that should allow for objective evaluation.