It’s time to overhaul a Medicare program that’s become an obstacle to medical innovation, Nonresident Senior Scholar Joe Grogan argues in a June 10 Wall Street Journal op-ed.
When Medicare’s Coverage with Evidence Development (CED) program was launched two decades ago, it was meant to speed patient access through clinical trials while additional data was collected. Instead, it’s morphed into a bureaucratic logjam that’s stifling use of FDA-approved products, including heart valve replacements and PET scans diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease, Grogan writes. Since 2005, only four of the 27 medical devices under the CED program have “graduated” to unrestricted coverage.
“After decades of disappointing results, CED has earned its place in the regulatory graveyard,” Grogan writes.
