14. Department of Health and Human Services · Major · Needs Congress
Replace Medicare fee-for-service with value-based payments
Printed page 465 14. Department of Health and Human Services
“Replace the bureaucrat-driven fee-for-service system with value-based payments to empower patients to find the care that best serves their needs.”
What has happened
- Attempted
CMS kept building mandatory value-based payment inside fee-for-service rather than replacing it: the FY 2026 IPPS/LTCH PPS final rule updates the Transforming Episode Accountability Model (TEAM), "a mandatory alternative payment model," ahead of its 2026-01-01 start for CABG, lower-extremity joint replacement, major bowel, hip/femur fracture and spinal-fusion episodes. Fee-for-service remains Medicare's base payment system; replacing it outright would take Congress, and no bill to do so has been introduced.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Related but not cited as separate events: the CY 2026 Physician Fee Schedule final rule (2025-11-05) adds the Ambulatory Specialty Model and updates the Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program expanded model; the Increasing Organ Transplant Access (IOTA) Model was updated by final rule on 2026-06-01. All are models layered on fee-for-service, not replacements for it.
- The CMS Innovation Center’s 2025 strategy statement sits on cms.gov, which refused to open for us; it is a lead.
- Action
- other
- Object
- Medicare fee-for-service system
- ID
- 1266