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On Dec. 12, Elizabeth Fowler, Ph.D., J.D., the director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), engaged in a lively Q&A with the Penn Medicine community in Philadelphia moderated by Rachel Werner, M.D., PhD., the executive director of Penn’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. Fowler began by talking about several projects currently on CMMI’s plate.
She noted that President Biden recently signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, which aims to address prescription drug prices. CMS is busy implementing that law. In addition, the President signed in October an executive order directing the Innovation Center to outline possible new models that have the potential for lowering drug costs and promoting access to innovative drug therapies for beneficiaries in Medicare and Medicaid. “We are busily working on that,” Fowler said. “The report is due essentially the third week in January. We’re looking at targeted model concepts to increase affordability of drugs and increase access to those novel therapies, so stay tuned. We’re thinking about prescription drugs as well in a very substantive way.”
What follows is a summary of the exchange between Fowler and the Penn Medicine community about work on alternative payment models at CMMI.