With just 50 days to go in his job as head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Acting Administrator Andrew Slavitt said he hopes the new regime in Washington will not undo the progress he said has been made in healthcare over the past eight years.
Slavitt, part of the outgoing Obama administration, spoke Thursday to the audience at the first MACRA MIPS/APM Summit held in Washington, and his prepared remarks were posted on the CMS blog. While he never mentioned President-elect Donald Trump by name, Slavitt said he hoped the new political climate in Washington would not reverse the progress brought about by steps such as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and implementation of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, which will change how clinicians get reimbursed under the Medicare program.
MACRA, which passed with bipartisan support from Congress, is not expected to go away under the Trump presidency, but the ACA is under attack. After almost two years as head of CMS, Slavitt will soon be out of a job as Trump has nominated Seema Verma, founder and CEO of consulting firm SVC Inc., to serve as administrator of the federal agency.
“Build from a foundation of progress, not head backwards. There can be no delivery system reform without building on the foundation of reaching universal coverage,” Slavitt told the audience.
He cited statistics showing progress made in improving healthcare under the Medicare program as well as changes made by the ACA, which has allowed 20 million people to gain health insurance coverage. “If you don’t think this progress has made a major difference in the day-to-day lives of all Americans, you have been paying more attention to politics than people,” he said.
Specifically, Slavitt said the CMS Innovation Center, created by the ACA to take best practices and develop alternative payment models and initiatives, is crucial to the success of MACRA. “I’ll say this bluntly: MACRA can't work as well without a CMS Innovation Center that can move quickly to develop and expand new approaches to paying for care,” he said.