The federal government’s role in health care was settled to a large extent when Congress passed, and then failed to repeal, the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as ObamaCare. While provisions of the law have been expanded and others reversed, the underlying system of healthcare exchanges remains intact. However, some ObamaCare programs have proven to be so ineffective and costly that they must be promptly repealed, starting with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.

The center was supposed to create new payment models that would reduce spending and improve quality of care for Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. When it was created, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that $7.5 billion would be spent on new models between 2011 and 2020, which would save $10.3 billion. The net savings of $2.8 billion represented .05 percent of Medicare’s net budget.

Even for members of Congress, who specialize in creating new programs that do not work, the idea that this experiment would lower costs and help stave off Medicare’s insolvency was preposterous. Simply put, government bureaucrats would get a little more than $1 billion annually to cook up new ideas to save a miniscule amount of money for the fourth largest federal program —........

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